***Official Political Discussion Thread***

Yea, you're not listening to what I'm saying. Seems like you're set on interpreting them a certain way. Race neutral "socialist-oriented policies" do not account for racism and oppression specifically suffered by Black Americans, thus, I personally do not see them as the same solve that white leftists generally think that they are for the class issues in the United States of America, as even when this class issue will be address, Black Americans will still face the same race based oppression at the hands of white people. Thus, leftists emphasis on these types of policies, attacks against "identity politics", etc., show me that white leftists either don't get it or are complicit in the same white supremacist system that they claim to be so ardently against as they fight against class warfare. You can't be for the liberation of working class/poor people without also specifically considering how these "race neutral" policies still have/will have harmful effects on the liberation of Black folks. It's not sufficient for me.

Why can't the leftist revolution also specifically address this as well? Why is it silent on how even among poor people, Black people are disproportionately affected and that's something that you will consider? Leftists can come up with a million plans under the sun with regards to class warfare, but when it comes to how Black poor people are disparately impacted here because they are also oppressed by racism, it's up to me to come up with "a concrete plan" that I want to see. That's my issue. It's either tone deaf, or willfully ignorant.
I am listening. I am asking you to be specific in terms of what you envision as adequate. A general statement that a policy "do[es] not account for racism and oppression specifically suffered by Black Americans" indicates your dissatisfaction but not what would actually meet that threshold for you.

What policy is going to ensure that "Black Americans [won't] still face the same race based oppression at the hands of white people," since that is apparently a criterion you're using to assess leftist policies? (It is statements like these from which I deduced the "eradicate racism" language from, since that seems to be the gist of this.) Since that is literally impossible to ensure as an outcome for any social policy as far as I can tell, I don't know what you want me or anyone else to say, be they leftists, progressives, neoliberals, or reactionaries. You're not identifying anything specific yourself that I can even respond to!

Please tell me specifically how a race-neutral federal living wage jobs guarantee "will have harmful effects on the liberation of Black folks." Please tell me specifically how Medicare for All will do the same. I'm all ears, fam.
 
It's weird that you're continuing to misrepresent what I'm saying when other people seem to have no problem understanding the point that I'm getting across. If you think that "socialist-oriented policies" are only capable of addressing classism, but not specifically considering and addressing racism --- then there's a problem with "socialist-oriented policies" and not with anything that I'm saying.
What, specifically, would adequately constitute "specifically considering and addressing racism" in your eyes?

I'm literally quoting your posts and asking you questions for clarification. I seriously don't know how you think I'm misrepresenting your views.
 
Jesus.....



And I thought nothing could top this

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They couldn’t reach the president

cuz he was golfing

If true this is wild to me because I swore some of his tweets had to be from other people. They must just send them to him and he officially posts. But regardless...wow.
 
If we had actually race neutral universal programs (as opposed to the new deal and post war labor peace programs which were not race neutral nor universal in many cases), the racial wealth gap would close and black people would be helped and helped disproportionately.

That said, it’s a moot point because we cannot do anything now, neither universal nor race based programs of redistribution are possible given the power that capital wields. If we do beat Capital with a multi racial workers’ coalition then we get to dictate terms and why settle for the second best thing when can get the best thing, universal programs combined with race specific restitution?

If we had to choose between a race neutral universal program and what we have now, we’d go with the race neutral programs. But if we have a chose of universal race neutral programs and universal programs in concert with a de facto or de jure reparations program, of course we should go with the latter.
 

🤔


Trump overruled advisers, VP on Taliban Camp David meeting

September 2019
 
Please tell me specifically how a race-neutral federal living wage jobs guarantee "will have harmful effects on the liberation of Black folks." Please tell me specifically how Medicare for All will do the same.
I’ve already explained as such with examples of health care, education system, discriminatory hiring practices in previous posts. You can literally pull for those posts to see. Your argument is that it will be much better. My argument is that it’s truly only a solve for poor whites if you aren’t fighting as hard to dismantle white supremacy these institutions as you are classism.
 
Sad part is we aren’t even as densely populated as a nation as Europe is.
This feels like a version of induced demand (where expanding the highway inevitably leads to more traffic, so there's always going to be rush hour, no matter how big you make the road).

Communities, whether small or large, sparse or dense, are going to try to get away with as much as they can until the virus hits them hard. All these red states cried and cried when they locked down early on because they couldn't put themselves in other people's shoes. This was partly a lack of imagination, an inability to generalize, and some good ol' fashioned anti-intellectualism.
 
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(If you know the source on this, let me know so I can give them proper credit.)

Yea, you're not listening to what I'm saying. Seems like you're set on interpreting them a certain way. Race neutral "socialist-oriented policies" do not account for racism and oppression specifically suffered by Black Americans, thus, I personally do not see them as the same solve that white leftists generally think that they are for the class issues in the United States of America, as even when this class issue will be address, Black Americans will still face the same race based oppression at the hands of white people. Thus, leftists emphasis on these types of policies, attacks against "identity politics", etc., show me that white leftists either don't get it or are complicit in the same white supremacist system that they claim to be so ardently against as they fight against class warfare. You can't be for the liberation of working class/poor people without also specifically considering how these "race neutral" policies still have/will have harmful effects on the liberation of Black folks. It's not sufficient for me.

Why can't the leftist revolution also specifically address this as well? Why is it silent on how even among poor people, Black people are disproportionately affected and that's something that you will consider? Leftists can come up with a million plans under the sun with regards to class warfare, but when it comes to how Black poor people are disparately impacted here because they are also oppressed by racism, it's up to me to come up with "a concrete plan" that I want to see. That's my issue. It's either tone deaf, or willfully ignorant.
"In opposing capitalism, we become the mortal enemy of every powerful government and corporation of the world, but, together, we can defeat them and form a glorious workers' paradise!"

"Do you support reparations?"

"No, that's not realistic."

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Dems need to pull the trigger on this

They absolutely do - but I think that misleading headline might be indicative of how such a policy would be received. It would be more accurate to say that a race-neutral program such as this would narrow - not close - the racial wealth gap. As the author of this particular piece rightly points out, baby bonds are no substitute for substantive reparations - and attempting to address centuries of racist policies through "race neutral" means is like suggesting that we can end sexism with "class based" affirmative action.

But you’re right you and Rusty and most the people I talk to in here, certainly everyone who posts here regularly and says their politics are left or left leaning, is not using social justice as a cover for neoliberal capitalism. I am just a pretty paranoid person and thank you for bearing with me on that.
Hopefully you recognize that such patience comes at a cost - as does your paranoia.
(It's also counterproductive, particularly if your goal is to improve.)

If Rusty posts an article about White fragility on the left, and the response he gets from multiple participants amounts to, "You shared that article because of me, didn't you!? You think I'm fragile, don't you!? How dare you! Sir, I DEMAND an apology! I am NOT fragile! Answer me!" that serves less to exonerate than to demonstrate.

The problems that he referenced, along with the authors of each respective article, are not "imagined," and they are doing real damage. If that's not apparent to you from personal observation, you need only look at the outcomes. There's work to be done here.

We should all agree that Rusty has the otherworldly patience of a Knicks fan. Prodding him into defending claims he did not make related to articles he did not write over an imagined slight was inappropriate to say the least. I'm glad you were able to recognize that in hindsight. Not everyone has.


And of course, leftism, that excludes, not only is a bad goal. It is also just a losing praxis especially in a diverse country where racial hierarchy is so bound up in its history. If a white worker will only get down with you if you deny the humanity of black people or indigenous people, you’re building your movement on a foundation of quicksand. As urgently as we need to build labor movements and build them quickly, movements that accommodate white supremacy aren’t going to save us.
That's precisely why echoing reactionary contempt for "identity politics" is so self-defeating.

As Rusty pointed out, it is intensely hypocritical for conservatives to denigrate "identity politics" when their entire party consists of "identity politics" for White evangelicals. It is perhaps equally disingenuous for someone on the left to decry "identity politics" only after carving out an exemption for their primary category of concern, on the specious grounds that an ascribed social class is not an immutable "identity" (while simultaneously arguing that we live in a pseudo-caste system in which upward mobility is more myth than substance.)

The ADA is a product of "identity politics." I don't think anyone here is going to argue that this represents a product of "false consciousness," and all those whose tireless activism won these basic, overdue reforms are sellouts more interested in converting the corporate ladder into a corporate ramp than "true liberation."

You'd think, after the concept of consequences of "White Feminism" belatedly entered the public consciousness, that White labor activists would have reflected on their own movement through this lens. Audre Lorde wrote of White Feminism,"Some problems we share as women, some we do not. You fear your children will grow up to join the patriarchy and testify against you, we fear our children will be dragged from a car and shot down in the street, and you will turn your backs upon the reasons they are dying." "As a Black lesbian feminist comfortable with the many different ingredients of my identity, and a woman committed to racial and sexual freedom from oppression, I find I am constantly being encouraged to pluck out some one aspect of myself and present this as the meaningful whole, eclipsing or denying the other parts of self. But this is a destructive and fragmenting way to live. My fullest concentration of energy is available to me only when I integrate all the parts of who I am, openly, allowing power from particular sources of my living to flow back and forth freely through all my different selves, without the restrictions of externally imposed definition. Only then can I bring myself and my energies as a whole to the service of those struggles which I embrace as a part of my being."

Straight, White, able, cisgender, Christian men are not asked to divide themselves by a White Socialism that unironically considers "identity politics" "divisive." The movement's goal is nothing less than their total freedom, and it allows them - and only them - to engage their whole selves without compromise. THAT is privilege. Such a movement is inherently unequal.


Poverty is not experienced in the same way if you are Black, and/or gay, and/or deaf. Black trans women have a life expectancy of 35 years.

So when you use phrases like "oppression Olympics," or say something like "If your world view holds that an underpaid call center worker, who is 2nd generation Vietnamese America and who is bisexual, is existentially different from a second generation Vietnamese America underpaid call center worker who is straight and who works in the same call center, you've just indulged in rainbow capitalism" it comes across as insultingly dismissive.

It's reasonable to assume that you would not agree that a straight, White, cisgender, Christian billionaire has fundamentally the same experience as a straight, White, cisgender, Christian trying to survive on a part-time job working in an Amazon warehouse. If that "one difference" is transformative, why is bisexuality less relevant by comparison - and how can you make that determination as a straight man? If, as I hope, that's not how you wish to come across, I would suggest listening and checking your language over getting defensive - because it's exactly this kind of messaging that tells someone "this is not for you."


Centering on White men, and pandering to White fragility through "race neutrality" isn't building a diverse coalition at the necessary scale - it's attracting a lot of sophomoric White guys all too eager to imitate their favorite trite anti-hero and weaponize their privileged, nihilistic apathy whenever they don't get their way.

White Socialism tells a Black trans woman, "what's best for me is best for everyone." If you're a White cisgender man, your liberation would arrive as a natural consequence of hers. The inverse is not true.

White Socialism pitches itself to people of color, especially Black Americans, through an argument no more nuanced and no less offensive than Trump's infamously racist 2016 appeal: "You're living in poverty, your schools are no good, you have no jobs, 58% of your youth is unemployed -- what the hell do you have to lose?" What if you're not poor, and you are well educated, and you are gainfully employed - in contradiction of the racist stereotype? Is there any more condescending follow-up to that than, "you've been duped into voting against your own interests, I know what's best for you"?

White Socialists will ask you to subordinate your liberation behind theirs, because the one form of oppression with which they are most familiar and (not coincidentally) the only one they are capable of experiencing just happens to be the ur-inequality from which all other injustices are descended.

These are people who act as though they've never been part of a coalition before, and don't know how to be present within anything that they can't commandeer and/or colonize.

They give up nothing. They demand everything. You will compromise. You will wait. You will sacrifice. They will get everything they seek, and they will get it now, or they will walk away and actively hope for your situation to grow more dire so as to supply you with a stronger impetus to carry them in the next cycle.

"Relieve us of our only burden," they implore. "That will take the pressure off so we can come back later for the rest of you." This is a con. It is a grift. It is a hollow, selfish parody of the basic fairness they claim to stand for.

Wimpy-Bro.jpg



If you want meaningful change, White Socialism is your enemy, too.

Only an intersectional movement will succeed.
 
White Socialism pitches itself to people of color, especially Black Americans, through an argument no more nuanced and no less offensive than Trump's infamously racist 2016 appeal: "You're living in poverty, your schools are no good, you have no jobs, 58% of your youth is unemployed -- what the hell do you have to lose?" What if you're not poor, and you are well educated, and you are gainfully employed - in contradiction of the racist stereotype? Is there any more condescending follow-up to that than, "you've been duped into voting against your own interests, I know what's best for you"?

White Socialists will ask you to subordinate your liberation behind theirs, because the one form of oppression with which they are most familiar and (not coincidentally) the only one they are capable of experiencing just happens to be the ur-inequality from which all other injustices are descended.

These are people who act as though they've never been part of a coalition before, and don't know how to be present within anything that they can't commandeer and/or colonize.

They give up nothing. They demand everything. You will compromise. You will wait. You will sacrifice. They will get everything they seek, and they will get it now, or they will walk away and actively hope for your situation to grow more dire so as to supply you with a stronger impetus to carry them in the next cycle.

He don’t miss.
 
had a conversation about white privilege with a conservative colleague the other day. we actuallally got to the point where we could both agree that race has some sort of impact on outcomes and inequities of today (how much is still being debated lol), which he vehemently denied in conversation in the past year. but when we came to talking about possible solutions he insists that a race targeted solution is more "racism" and "discrimination". So i asked him, how do you balance an imbalance without favoring one side? he still hasnt gotten back to me :lol:

i swear this white supremacy sh*t is so ingrained and baked into republican conservatism these guys cant think outside of their own talking points or being the opposite of democrat talking points
 
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