Can These Bones Live?
A quick drive-by, on the subject of 9/11 vs. Katrina response. I suspect that in addition to the different nature of the disasters, which Ax pointed out, the difference in response is in part due to the state of the U.S. budget at the time each occurred.
If there was anything that depressed him more than his own cynicism, it was that quite often it still wasn't as cynical as real life.
Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!
Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!
ax - I wrote my post before I saw yours (what can I say, I type slowly at times!). I agree that your comparisons were more apt. Someone (maybe me) mentioned 9/11 earlier on this thread...and then we mentioned that we weren't questioning how those victims spent their aid money. But in terms of clean-up, a natural disaster is a better comparison.
I know of floods in Ohio where they were still cleaning up a year later. But much smaller scale, and less problems with the mold, I guess. A ruined basement is not a ruined house.
Dave_LF, I certainly have suggested that...but then where do these people go? I can't imagine that "see ya" is a good reaction on any grounds. There has to be some way to build "Katrina" communities in other cities, or even just elsewhere in LA. But I don't know what it is....
I know of floods in Ohio where they were still cleaning up a year later. But much smaller scale, and less problems with the mold, I guess. A ruined basement is not a ruined house.
Dave_LF, I certainly have suggested that...but then where do these people go? I can't imagine that "see ya" is a good reaction on any grounds. There has to be some way to build "Katrina" communities in other cities, or even just elsewhere in LA. But I don't know what it is....
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axordil
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There are anecdotal reports of Katrina victims doing both well and not-so-well in various relocation cities. Houston is going to be the test case...it got the most by far, on the order of 150,000 (not just from NOLA). Last I saw, unemployment in this group was around 80%, but two-thirds were planning on staying in the Houston area. Parse that as you will. There's little doubt that the schools are better almost anywhere they went.
Yeah, Arkansas, Mississippi and Louisiana jockey for 50th place as far as schools go 
But for those who did not move away and start over...the people living in temporary accomodations, like FEMA trailers....some long-term solution needs to be worked out for them.
And those whose houses are habitable are living in destroyed communities with a lot of other problems....
Even if you cut the losses and move on, there's a lot to do.
But for those who did not move away and start over...the people living in temporary accomodations, like FEMA trailers....some long-term solution needs to be worked out for them.
And those whose houses are habitable are living in destroyed communities with a lot of other problems....
Even if you cut the losses and move on, there's a lot to do.
I've kind of lost my stomach for this conversation, but as at least one person has praised my guts in private for persisting with it, I will do so, because the views expressed here are typical American views, imo, and if I cannot hold a discussion like this with all you whom I know fairly well and consider friends, how could I ever hope to talk with anyone outside my own 'circle'?
But I'm going to start by saying two things that will probably cause some aggravation and defensiveness.
1. Within a month of Katrina, I started a thread here about the nature of the economic exploitation that was going to follow Katrina. Mistakenly, perhaps, I tried to pull the logical conclusions out of everyone by asking questions. There were hardly any takers in that thread, though I honestly don't know whether people lacked interest in the topic or if my method was just too pedantic.
But the same questions have been raised in this thread far more clearly by Mith and by vison, and again everyone has demonstrated indifference to the one issue I was trying to get at. I strongly suspect that no one would have overlooked this issue if the bereft of Katrina were White and not Black.
All those abandoned properties .... of course the people do not have the money to restore them and many were without insurance. It makes perfect sense for them to cut their losses and start over elsewhere, wherever they were settled as refugees.
So what will happen to that property? Who owned it before? Who will own it now? Will it be developed by land speculators coming in? - and if so, who will reap the eventual profits?
Now that the 9th parish has been emptied of its undesirables by a hurricane, which surely cannot be the fault of any White person (except the malfeasant and negligent who knew of the problems and ignored them, but who will never, ever be brought to trial for this) - now that the 9th parish has been emptied of Black people, I predict that it will be gentrified. And I really have to ask myself why I am the only White person who is asking cui bono? Is it only because I am an economist?
Property is everything in America. The disposition of the now-empty WTC lot was the FIRST thing people talked about - callous sods that we are, in fact - all that empty real estate. The disposition of the abandoned property in NO is one of the most important economic decisions that will be made post-Katrina. And yet all of us acknowledge that the Blacks will probably not return even to the property that they owned, and this strikes us as a non-issue?
Welfare -- it seems self-evident that people should liquidate their own assets before taking largesse from the State, but how many of us realize that if you lose your job for long enough and have to go on welfare you must sell your home, your car, your insurance policies, anything with asset value and turn ALL of it over to the State. Assets equate to future income in our economy. Every banker and politician and carpetbagger knows this deep in his gut. His whole existence is predicated on this. The welfare system did not make it through Congress in the 1960's because we woke up one morning with the saintly illumination that a social safety net was needed but because we realized immediately that this was the perfect way to strip marginal communities of all remaining assets. Generations on welfare? Don't kid yourself. It was planned that way and everyone who supported it knew that this would be the result.
That is exactly what will happen post-Katrina. Watch and see if I am wrong. But it's a non-issue for us, unlike the WTC property, and tell me again why that is?
2. At one point here we had a brief discussion about our word filter, and hal used that occassion to assert that the N-word is not always a slur in the South because southerners consider this word descriptive and not pejorative. Iirc, two or three people expressed their surprise and disagreement and one of them was me. (Whistler said something to me in private about the inaccuracy of this statement, but did not post in public. So perhaps four people altogether objected?)
Were there three pages of posts discussing the horrid inappropriateness of this term whenever and wherever it is used, by whomever uses it? Not a chance.
Two recent quotes in this thread are apposite:
Why we feel visceral hatred for the term 'oreo,' and it seems that we do, while feeling enlightened disapprobation for the N-word, as it seems we do, has everything to do with the reality of Katrina. IMHO.
It has happened once or twice that a woman here expressed a special hatred for the c-word. I share this hatred and that it is why it is also in our filter. I have never used that word to describe a woman, can't stand to hear it used ... perhaps one day we will find women rap singers using that word as a symbol of defiance and reclamation, but if Black experience is any indication, it takes about 130 years before a victim can comfortably reclaim the most derisive word used against them. So I might look forward to c- rap appearing circa 2090.
Meanwhile I hope that what makes the c-word and the N-word similar, and what makes both of them dissimilar to the O-word, is not lost on our members.
That being said:
What a racist really hates about a person of different race is not his different outside but his different inside. People from other cultural contexts, particularly those reinforced by race, truly do not view the world as we do. Their entire experience is different from ours and they will never be and can never be exactly like us on the inside. The outside only points to this; it is the instant identifier of persons who are different on the inside.
That is why I said, and will continue to insist, that the idea that a Black person could be made to think like a White person and thus be made acceptable to the White community is an idea that could ONLY have come from the White community. It could never have come from the Black community because they are the ones who are eviscerated by this approach. The belief that other people are only acceptable after they have been eviscerated is racist, and our thinking today that this idea is one that Blacks might have found acceptable is itself a symptom of endemic racism.
OK, this is going to be tough.
(My bold)
The USA, still predominantly White, has one of the least funded and least successful educational systems in the world. We are the world's second worst in geography, as I mentioned in another thread I believe; a college education here is equal to a high school education in Europe. More than half of the students in our graduate schools and professional schools come here from abroad, and we have been unable to reverse this trend.
I teach hundreds of new students every year. Allow me to be as biased and slanted in my observations as everyone else is in theirs - none of the information is fudged, btw, but it is up to me what conclusions I draw, right?
I see Black students almost universally holding down two jobs and going to school at the same time. I see few White students expected to hold down even one job while going to school, and yet they barely bother to turn in their homework. Give me a classroom full of Black students any day. I'm not kidding. They are significantly more attentive, more dilligent and more communicative.
Give me a classroom full of foreigners, any day. They can add, subtract, and multiply using decimal points. They can read, and they do read. They know where things like the Eiffel Tower are located, and if I refer to Voltaire I am not greeted with blank stares.
Education is not a White American value. Not in my experience.
If there is one word I would choose to describe the pervasive White American attitude toward education it would be "anti-intellectual." Or maybe, "football."
Etiquette? If I have to stare up the shorts of one more White guy sitting spread-eagled in his chair in summertime without underwear, I will probably scream. There is absolutely no Black or European student who comes to class dressed as slovely as the White students do. White students are frequently impolite, if they speak coherently at all; Black students never are. Europeans would rather shoot themselves than plead with a professor for favoritism. And I am teaching in college - a collage that is relatively difficult to get into. I haven't even touched the 78% of Americans who have no college education, the uncounted millions who read National Enquirer and watch Jerry Springer and have no aspirations whatsoever to decorum much less professionalism.
America was built on blue collar labor, not professionalism. Please don't misunderstand me - I am proud of that. I am a union member and save my sharpest rebuttals for other economists who downplay the importance of the great unwashed middle middle class from which every good economic thing has sprung in this country. But to think that it is somehow more White than Black to desire a profession is specious nonsense.
But here's the kicker. Here's where the rock meets the hard place.
What appears to me to be totally off the wall about this appropriation of education, formalism, and professional achievement as White values is the implicit assumption throughout this discussion that Blacks also hold the delusion that these are White values.
I submit to you that after 300 years of slavery and discrimination, the Black community sees right through us.
We look at the endemic media depictions of the worst sections of Black society - the 'hood' - and extrapolate from that to all middle and upper class Blacks. The hood is no more representative of Black ideals than the unemployed coal miners in western Pennsylvania are representative of Philadelphia stock brokers. There is no Democratic candidate anywhere, to my knowledge, who assumes that he has the Black vote just because he is not Republican.
I disregard totally the bad words that school kids throw around on the playground because children rarely understand the real meaning of the words they use to insult one another. I still blush to remember the explanation my parents gave me when they heard me use the word 'putz.' It was a word I had heard and repeated thinking it was a synonym for 'stupid.'
Black kids call eachother 'oreo' for turning in their homework ... instead of 'teacher's pet, I guess? ... and this is evidence that education is a White value, Black people agree that education is a White value, and reject it for that reason????
Do people understand that such facile conclusions are underpinned by a racist thinking that pervades our whole society?
This is not to justify my use of the word. But we are the ones who invented tokenism and to say that they may not call this child by its Black name is ... well, let's fix our own house first.
What I do not endorse or defend is the idea that White values are inherently superior to Black values, that Blacks have ever acknowledged such a thing, or that any Black word means or has ever meant or could ever have meant that they agree with such an assessment and consider their choice to be Black Culture versus sound values and achievement.
Jn
But I'm going to start by saying two things that will probably cause some aggravation and defensiveness.
1. Within a month of Katrina, I started a thread here about the nature of the economic exploitation that was going to follow Katrina. Mistakenly, perhaps, I tried to pull the logical conclusions out of everyone by asking questions. There were hardly any takers in that thread, though I honestly don't know whether people lacked interest in the topic or if my method was just too pedantic.
But the same questions have been raised in this thread far more clearly by Mith and by vison, and again everyone has demonstrated indifference to the one issue I was trying to get at. I strongly suspect that no one would have overlooked this issue if the bereft of Katrina were White and not Black.
All those abandoned properties .... of course the people do not have the money to restore them and many were without insurance. It makes perfect sense for them to cut their losses and start over elsewhere, wherever they were settled as refugees.
So what will happen to that property? Who owned it before? Who will own it now? Will it be developed by land speculators coming in? - and if so, who will reap the eventual profits?
Now that the 9th parish has been emptied of its undesirables by a hurricane, which surely cannot be the fault of any White person (except the malfeasant and negligent who knew of the problems and ignored them, but who will never, ever be brought to trial for this) - now that the 9th parish has been emptied of Black people, I predict that it will be gentrified. And I really have to ask myself why I am the only White person who is asking cui bono? Is it only because I am an economist?
Property is everything in America. The disposition of the now-empty WTC lot was the FIRST thing people talked about - callous sods that we are, in fact - all that empty real estate. The disposition of the abandoned property in NO is one of the most important economic decisions that will be made post-Katrina. And yet all of us acknowledge that the Blacks will probably not return even to the property that they owned, and this strikes us as a non-issue?
Welfare -- it seems self-evident that people should liquidate their own assets before taking largesse from the State, but how many of us realize that if you lose your job for long enough and have to go on welfare you must sell your home, your car, your insurance policies, anything with asset value and turn ALL of it over to the State. Assets equate to future income in our economy. Every banker and politician and carpetbagger knows this deep in his gut. His whole existence is predicated on this. The welfare system did not make it through Congress in the 1960's because we woke up one morning with the saintly illumination that a social safety net was needed but because we realized immediately that this was the perfect way to strip marginal communities of all remaining assets. Generations on welfare? Don't kid yourself. It was planned that way and everyone who supported it knew that this would be the result.
That is exactly what will happen post-Katrina. Watch and see if I am wrong. But it's a non-issue for us, unlike the WTC property, and tell me again why that is?
2. At one point here we had a brief discussion about our word filter, and hal used that occassion to assert that the N-word is not always a slur in the South because southerners consider this word descriptive and not pejorative. Iirc, two or three people expressed their surprise and disagreement and one of them was me. (Whistler said something to me in private about the inaccuracy of this statement, but did not post in public. So perhaps four people altogether objected?)
Were there three pages of posts discussing the horrid inappropriateness of this term whenever and wherever it is used, by whomever uses it? Not a chance.
Two recent quotes in this thread are apposite:
I most certainly have never used this term myself to describe a Black person. How could I? It is not a term that any White person can sensically use. It is a Black word, coined by Blacks, expressing a Black sentiment about Black people.Whistler wrote:The term [oreo] is pretty common, and I am confident that she [Jn] does not use it herself.
In my opinion these two things - the language and the reality - are so intimately connected that they might as well be having sex together in public.Faramond wrote:Sadly, it's easier to argue about how what a word really means than to confront the reality of Katrina.
Why we feel visceral hatred for the term 'oreo,' and it seems that we do, while feeling enlightened disapprobation for the N-word, as it seems we do, has everything to do with the reality of Katrina. IMHO.
It has happened once or twice that a woman here expressed a special hatred for the c-word. I share this hatred and that it is why it is also in our filter. I have never used that word to describe a woman, can't stand to hear it used ... perhaps one day we will find women rap singers using that word as a symbol of defiance and reclamation, but if Black experience is any indication, it takes about 130 years before a victim can comfortably reclaim the most derisive word used against them. So I might look forward to c- rap appearing circa 2090.
Meanwhile I hope that what makes the c-word and the N-word similar, and what makes both of them dissimilar to the O-word, is not lost on our members.
That being said:
No, I did not say this. I agree that it is derogatory term. I apologized for using it because I felt in calmer light that is was indeed wrong for me to appropriate this word. I would be inclined, however, to classify it as a curse rather than a slur because of the distinction pointed out above.Faramond wrote:I and others maintain that "oreo" is a slur. Jn says it's not.
I was not talking about the fact that the word is insulting but only about your equating it with Black Republicans. Whistler asserts your meaning, too. I disagree with both of you that it has ever meant this or means this today. But that is a topic of its own which I will take on in a moment.Faramond wrote:My position is that "oreo", in this current time, is an extremely hurtful term and should be avoided, even in quotes. Jn's position is roughly that I'm full of cookies and don't know what I'm talking about.
What a racist really hates about a person of different race is not his different outside but his different inside. People from other cultural contexts, particularly those reinforced by race, truly do not view the world as we do. Their entire experience is different from ours and they will never be and can never be exactly like us on the inside. The outside only points to this; it is the instant identifier of persons who are different on the inside.
That is why I said, and will continue to insist, that the idea that a Black person could be made to think like a White person and thus be made acceptable to the White community is an idea that could ONLY have come from the White community. It could never have come from the Black community because they are the ones who are eviscerated by this approach. The belief that other people are only acceptable after they have been eviscerated is racist, and our thinking today that this idea is one that Blacks might have found acceptable is itself a symptom of endemic racism.
Bingo!Griff wrote:Griffon64: On the other hand, to me at least it seems to be not so much a matter of skin colour or race, but a matter of culture.
It is much clearer from this example that terms connoting evisceration refer to a deep cultural values and not to material values because in this case the material values (as self-proclaimed) do not differ much between the cultures in question.vison wrote:The Chinese community has the word "banana": yellow on the outside, white on the inside.
OK, this is going to be tough.
(My bold)
Indeed, what do they mean?vison wrote: My understanding of the word "oreo" was quite simple until I started reading this thread: an "oreo" was a "black" person who "acted white". Whatever any of those terms mean.
On what basis do we identify education, etiquette and professional status as White values?Whistler wrote:Black and overly concerned with education, etiquette, professional status and other "white" matters.
The USA, still predominantly White, has one of the least funded and least successful educational systems in the world. We are the world's second worst in geography, as I mentioned in another thread I believe; a college education here is equal to a high school education in Europe. More than half of the students in our graduate schools and professional schools come here from abroad, and we have been unable to reverse this trend.
I teach hundreds of new students every year. Allow me to be as biased and slanted in my observations as everyone else is in theirs - none of the information is fudged, btw, but it is up to me what conclusions I draw, right?
I see Black students almost universally holding down two jobs and going to school at the same time. I see few White students expected to hold down even one job while going to school, and yet they barely bother to turn in their homework. Give me a classroom full of Black students any day. I'm not kidding. They are significantly more attentive, more dilligent and more communicative.
Give me a classroom full of foreigners, any day. They can add, subtract, and multiply using decimal points. They can read, and they do read. They know where things like the Eiffel Tower are located, and if I refer to Voltaire I am not greeted with blank stares.
Education is not a White American value. Not in my experience.
If there is one word I would choose to describe the pervasive White American attitude toward education it would be "anti-intellectual." Or maybe, "football."
Etiquette? If I have to stare up the shorts of one more White guy sitting spread-eagled in his chair in summertime without underwear, I will probably scream. There is absolutely no Black or European student who comes to class dressed as slovely as the White students do. White students are frequently impolite, if they speak coherently at all; Black students never are. Europeans would rather shoot themselves than plead with a professor for favoritism. And I am teaching in college - a collage that is relatively difficult to get into. I haven't even touched the 78% of Americans who have no college education, the uncounted millions who read National Enquirer and watch Jerry Springer and have no aspirations whatsoever to decorum much less professionalism.
America was built on blue collar labor, not professionalism. Please don't misunderstand me - I am proud of that. I am a union member and save my sharpest rebuttals for other economists who downplay the importance of the great unwashed middle middle class from which every good economic thing has sprung in this country. But to think that it is somehow more White than Black to desire a profession is specious nonsense.
But here's the kicker. Here's where the rock meets the hard place.
What appears to me to be totally off the wall about this appropriation of education, formalism, and professional achievement as White values is the implicit assumption throughout this discussion that Blacks also hold the delusion that these are White values.
I submit to you that after 300 years of slavery and discrimination, the Black community sees right through us.
And for that reason I also submit that you may think you see who the current targets are but you probably do not. None of really do.Faramond wrote:I can't claim to know the feelings and experiences that may fuel the use of the word ... or its origin ... but I can see who the current targets are.
We look at the endemic media depictions of the worst sections of Black society - the 'hood' - and extrapolate from that to all middle and upper class Blacks. The hood is no more representative of Black ideals than the unemployed coal miners in western Pennsylvania are representative of Philadelphia stock brokers. There is no Democratic candidate anywhere, to my knowledge, who assumes that he has the Black vote just because he is not Republican.
I disregard totally the bad words that school kids throw around on the playground because children rarely understand the real meaning of the words they use to insult one another. I still blush to remember the explanation my parents gave me when they heard me use the word 'putz.' It was a word I had heard and repeated thinking it was a synonym for 'stupid.'
Black kids call eachother 'oreo' for turning in their homework ... instead of 'teacher's pet, I guess? ... and this is evidence that education is a White value, Black people agree that education is a White value, and reject it for that reason????
Do people understand that such facile conclusions are underpinned by a racist thinking that pervades our whole society?
But to deny the Black community the right to create and use this word with its viscerally metaphorical precision is also to say that there is a "correct" way for them to talk about what happens in their community, and we will not tolerate in particular those words that are too stingingly descriptive of their relationship to us.Whistler wrote:I find the term grotesque in its assumption that there is a "correct" way for a black person to think and vote. That's an inherently racist thought, and the term itself is inherently racist in my opinion.
This is not to justify my use of the word. But we are the ones who invented tokenism and to say that they may not call this child by its Black name is ... well, let's fix our own house first.
Do I think it is a terrible thing when a person allows their inclusion in a community to be used to sell out that community? Yes, I do. I think that this is one of the worst things a person can do. If I, as a Jew, used my familiarity with the Jewish community to help Arabs deceive or do harm to the Jewish community, I tremble to think what word other Jews would use to describe me.Nel wrote:Jn, I think the concern about this remark is because it reads as though you are not merely remarking that some in the Black community feel that way, but are endorsing or defending that viewpoint.
What I do not endorse or defend is the idea that White values are inherently superior to Black values, that Blacks have ever acknowledged such a thing, or that any Black word means or has ever meant or could ever have meant that they agree with such an assessment and consider their choice to be Black Culture versus sound values and achievement.
Jn
A fool's paradise is a wise man's hell.
I can't even begin to wrap my head around some of the stuff you're saying. It's like we're living in different planes. This particularly left me...boggled:
I was gonna say...something...in response to this, but before letting my head explode, I decided to ask for clarification on this statement. Cuz I really don't think you can mean what I think you mean.Jn wrote: Why we feel visceral hatred for the term 'oreo,' and it seems that we do, while feeling enlightened disapprobation for the N-word, as it seems we do, has everything to do with the reality of Katrina. IMHO.
...
Meanwhile I hope that what makes the c-word and the N-word similar, and what makes both of them dissimilar to the O-word, is not lost on our members.
I wanna love somebody but I don't know how
I wanna throw my body in the river and drown
-The Decemberists
I wanna throw my body in the river and drown
-The Decemberists
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That would be me. I should at least have the guts to admit that. It has been extraordinarily painful for me to read this discussion. I have found it impossible to respond to some of the things that I have read here, so I just want to express my gratitude to Jn for having the fortitude, courage, perseverence, intelligence and articulateness to say what I have not been able to.at least one person has praised my guts in private for persisting with it
"Spirits in the shape of hawks and eagles flew ever to and from his halls; and their eyes could see to the depths of the seas, and pierce the hidden caverns beneath the world."
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Faramond, it's not a question of enlightened versus unenlightened. It's more of a question of there being such a disconnect between my views and those of most of my friends here on this issue. And no, I am not going to name names, because I don't see how that would be helpful. I probably should have remained quiet, but I did not think it was fair for me to quietly agree with Jn and watch her be criticized without speaking up in support of her. These are issues that are very close to my heart because I have a lot friends in the African-American community, mostly through my interest in African drumming, and that strongly colors my feelings about these questions. I didn't mean to offend you (and in fact I have found your comments to be very helpful and I have agreed with most them, particularly in regards to issues related to Katrina itself).
Last edited by Voronwë the Faithful on Fri Sep 15, 2006 2:48 am, edited 1 time in total.
"Spirits in the shape of hawks and eagles flew ever to and from his halls; and their eyes could see to the depths of the seas, and pierce the hidden caverns beneath the world."
I feel this thread is becoming a "who can dump on the other side more" contest.
The college experience you describe Jn, was not the same as mine (well, the part about a lot of students not working was...I always hated to hear them complain about being busy when they didn't have to work like I did). And your descriptions most certainly are not reflective of my high school experience...quite the opposite.
edit: a use of a word was criticized, not a person.
The college experience you describe Jn, was not the same as mine (well, the part about a lot of students not working was...I always hated to hear them complain about being busy when they didn't have to work like I did). And your descriptions most certainly are not reflective of my high school experience...quite the opposite.
edit: a use of a word was criticized, not a person.
Well, all I can say is, thank you, Peter Jackson. If PJ had never made those awful movies, I would never have learned to post on an internet message board and I would never have met Jnyusa.
That was a wonderful post, full of sense and care for reasonable sensibilities, deserving of careful reading. I think it's one of the best I've ever read on that subject. Thank you, Jnyusa.
Eruname, forgive me, but you are mistaken. No one is dumping on anyone. These are hard topics to discuss, since people tend to respond viscerally. Earlier in the thread I said, about Jnyusa, "Don't kill the messenger." I also remember her first posts on the subject of Katrina. I am not, myself, so cynical as Jnyusa, but her experiences are not mine. Maybe I need my soft edges knocked off.
We Halofirians can surely disagree without resentment. We Halofirians can surely accept each other as being people of good will.
That was a wonderful post, full of sense and care for reasonable sensibilities, deserving of careful reading. I think it's one of the best I've ever read on that subject. Thank you, Jnyusa.
Eruname, forgive me, but you are mistaken. No one is dumping on anyone. These are hard topics to discuss, since people tend to respond viscerally. Earlier in the thread I said, about Jnyusa, "Don't kill the messenger." I also remember her first posts on the subject of Katrina. I am not, myself, so cynical as Jnyusa, but her experiences are not mine. Maybe I need my soft edges knocked off.
We Halofirians can surely disagree without resentment. We Halofirians can surely accept each other as being people of good will.
Dig deeper.
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I, for one, am finding the discussion in its entirety very illuminating. I've followed it but not participated as I'm not an American and the cultural nuances you are investigating are foreign to me; your culture is not mine.
But as an outsider, an observer, it's been a real education to see how the individual paradigms each poster inhabits are demonstrated through this discussion. I have to say, my respect for all who have posted here has broadened (and I was already a card-carrying member of the admiration society).
I hope, therefore, that the discussion can remain rational and not descend to the emotional; I think you all deserve for that not to happen.
But as an outsider, an observer, it's been a real education to see how the individual paradigms each poster inhabits are demonstrated through this discussion. I have to say, my respect for all who have posted here has broadened (and I was already a card-carrying member of the admiration society).
I hope, therefore, that the discussion can remain rational and not descend to the emotional; I think you all deserve for that not to happen.
I am confused. 
This discussion doesn't bother me. In fact...I see very little rancour in it. I thought we were all expressing how wrong the current situation in LA is, and then moved on to a discussion of nuance of words and culture.
So, should I have been offended at some point? Should I have noticed that someone got insulted? The conversation has been interesting, but if I'm tearing people to shreds without even noticing...I really should just shut up and get out. But since we are all oh-so-delicately not naming names....I don't even know if I was the one who was cutting a broad machete path through here.
I understand (at least some) of the points you are making Jn. I 'get' that it seems....odd....that the White community would tell the Black community they can't use a slur to describe black people who have sold out. But then, I don't let my students call each other "stupid", and I have always thought that this board had the....decorum to avoid flinging insults. I would suggest that most posters misunderstood your very particular reference to use of the word, and rather thought of all the times they had heard it used. Slang, after all, varies widely in use.
I have never taken an economics class, and barely manage to pay my taxes correctly. So, I don't expect to understand you in your own field. I trust that you know what you are talking about. I thought we were talking about land that, if not rebuilt by the owners, would be condemned and abandoned, not rebuilt or snatched up by anyone. But that is not the only thing that has (apparently) gone over my head.
So, ummm
What is the problem here? I guess I should go find the other Katrina thread...maybe that would help...I don't know what else everyone is talking about....
I would like to apologize. I feel that I should. But I would merely be apologizing for blundering around in the dark, since I don't yet know what I did wrong. So, I realize that doesn't count for much. I am sorry, though. I was writing in ink, and didn't even notice other people were writing in blood.....
This discussion doesn't bother me. In fact...I see very little rancour in it. I thought we were all expressing how wrong the current situation in LA is, and then moved on to a discussion of nuance of words and culture. So, should I have been offended at some point? Should I have noticed that someone got insulted? The conversation has been interesting, but if I'm tearing people to shreds without even noticing...I really should just shut up and get out. But since we are all oh-so-delicately not naming names....I don't even know if I was the one who was cutting a broad machete path through here.
I understand (at least some) of the points you are making Jn. I 'get' that it seems....odd....that the White community would tell the Black community they can't use a slur to describe black people who have sold out. But then, I don't let my students call each other "stupid", and I have always thought that this board had the....decorum to avoid flinging insults. I would suggest that most posters misunderstood your very particular reference to use of the word, and rather thought of all the times they had heard it used. Slang, after all, varies widely in use.
I have never taken an economics class, and barely manage to pay my taxes correctly. So, I don't expect to understand you in your own field. I trust that you know what you are talking about. I thought we were talking about land that, if not rebuilt by the owners, would be condemned and abandoned, not rebuilt or snatched up by anyone. But that is not the only thing that has (apparently) gone over my head.
So, ummm
What is the problem here? I guess I should go find the other Katrina thread...maybe that would help...I don't know what else everyone is talking about....I would like to apologize. I feel that I should. But I would merely be apologizing for blundering around in the dark, since I don't yet know what I did wrong. So, I realize that doesn't count for much. I am sorry, though. I was writing in ink, and didn't even notice other people were writing in blood.....
It’s probably correct that we live on different planes where some of these issues are concerned. That’s what makes them so hard to talk about.yov wrote:I can't even begin to wrap my head around some of the stuff you're saying. It's like we're living in different planes.
The c-word and the N-word were invented by one group to disparage another. The o-word was invented by a group to disparage certain of its own members, not to disparage others.... before letting my head explode, I decided to ask for clarification on this statement.
The c-word and the N-word were invented by people of greater power to describe people of lesser power, who were in some realms their victims. (This is more true for the N-word of course.) The o-word was invented by people of lesser power to describe a type of oppression they were experiencing from people of greater power. I personally give a lot more latitude to a victim’s language than to an oppressor’s language because their every intention is different.
Finally, the o-word is rooted in an experiential reality, and the meaning of the metaphor points to that reality. Whereas the other two words take a physical attribute that is otherwise neutral and draft on to it the negative attitudes of society. They are connoting rather than denoting the negative meaning.
Sorry ... that’s a fluffy explanation because I am trying not to be too blunt. But maybe it’s not possible to talk about this without being blunt, so let me risk it.
Every woman has genitalia (let’s say so) and every Black person has skin that is more negro than blanco (let’s say so). These descriptions do not by themselves denote anything bad about the person, though they may be considered vulgar (in the case of the c-word) or lazy pronunciation (in the case of the N-word). That is one reason why hal can assert that the N-word is descriptive when used by some, and it is not so easy to explain why this is really not the case.
These are “bad words” because of their connotation, because of the social sentiment that they are used to carry. Furthermore, by denoting otherwise neutral attributes, they apply to all members of the group in question. There is no Black person who is excluded from the social meaning of the N-word, no woman who is not socially identified by the c-word. Therefore a social context is required for understanding why this word, which applies to ‘everyone,’ would have such negative connotation. It is in this sense that these words are truly racial and gender "slurs."
The o-word is different, in my opinion, in that someone like vison who has no context for understanding the social power of this word can nevertheless hear the word and because of its denotation understand immediately the nature of the phenomenon to which it refers. She also knows immediately that it cannot apply to all but only to some and is therefore behavioral and not strictly racial, even though it obviously emerges from a racial context.
Those are reasons why these three words are different from one another, which does not excuse my using any of them.
Men are more likely than women to feel only enlightened disapprobation for the c-word - that is, they wouldn’t use it themselves but don’t have deep feelings that it is an unspeakable word, whereas woman are more likely to feel repulsion. Similarly, Whites are more likely to feel little more than disapprobation for the N-word, and Blacks are more likely to feel little more than disapprobation for the o-word (those about whom it would not be said) because they have never been on the receiving end of those words.
A White person is denigrated in a roundabout way by the o-word, and I suggest that the demonstrably more emotional response of our all-White membership (in this thread) to that word than to the N-word is because of it’s relationship to us and not because it denigrates Blacks or because it is unfashionable in having racial context. Both factors are at work, of course, but I believe it is generally true that all of us make excuses for “our own,” and for this reason it is easier to ignore the N-word which only we would use than it is to ignore the o-word which only they would use.
As expected. That is why I said at the beginning of that description that I would take the liberty of drawing slanted, biased conclusions.Eru wrote:And your descriptions most certainly are not reflective of my high school experience...quite the opposite.
Each of us does that, based on our own narrow experience. It is the fact that we all do it that I wanted to call attention to. We have a narrow set of experiences that constitute our reality check, and the interpretations we then give to those experiences are influenced largely if not completely by the social context handed to us for interpreting them.As far as I am concerned, that is what we are discussing. No one other than me has cause to apologize, and I apologize for using a vulgar word, not for thinking the thoughts that I think.Mith wrote:This discussion doesn't bother me. In fact...I see very little rancour in it. I thought we were all expressing how wrong the current situation in LA is, and then moved on to a discussion of nuance of words and culture.
What I would like to ... expose ... is the fact that it is far more convenient for White people than it is for Black people if race is not a factor in the discussion, if generalizations cannot be made, and if only polite language can be used. We are the ones who made race the fulcrum of advancement in this country, and racism is neither irrelevant to select topics, nor restricted to a few exceptions, nor a polite phenomenon. I do believe that our avoidance of blunt speech about these issues is because they personally embarrass us and not because we are not truly racist.Eru wrote: ... broad generalizations about different races that really bother me.
I cannot begin to comprehend the unexplored attitudes I myself hold toward people who are very different from me. And I got clued into my own blindness not because of association with the Black community - indeed I have none at all to speak of - but because of my exposure to leftist attitudes towards the people of Central America whom they are spending so much generous effort to ‘fix.’ The left in this country holds some of the most unabashedly racist attitudes imaginable, and recipients of these attitudes know exactly who holds them.
Also, we think the way we do not because blindness and prejeudice are White attributes but because blindness and prejudice are attributes of the dominant culture anywhere. The one great characteristic of all dominant cultures is that they are exempt from self-examination. Minorities always know more about the dominant culture than the dominant culture knows about itself.
Finally, thank you, really, from the bottom of my heart, to everyone who is willing to discuss this issue non-defensively and with an open mind. When I talk about racism I am talking about myself in all cases. Discovering my own prejudices has been a kind of lifelong journey for me, because I come from a long line of genteel racists and I’ve had to partner in work with people whose “insides” were so alien to me that I really didn’t know how we would be able to communicate. It was that challenge which ... taught me, if I may be so pedantic ... the extent to which unexplored and inaccurate assumptions color just about all our thoughts.
Jn
A fool's paradise is a wise man's hell.
I am definitely an outsider here, so please bear with my naive questions, Jn. Your description of the differences between the n-word and the o-word is well reasoned. I am not sure I follow the reasoning, however.
I wouldn't use either word, casually or otherwise. My gut reaction to both is strong and negative, and I react to the o-word much stronger than to the n-word. Here's why.
N-word, when used by a non-Black person, is clearly a racial insult. Because you are of another race, you are inferior, it implies. I know from first-hand experience how that works, although in my case it was anti-Semitism rather than racism that I had to confront. The way to fight that put down is to claim your heritage with pride. It's hard but doable.
O-word, when used by one Black person to describe another, seems far more subtly poisonous. Now your own community is telling you that you don't belong. Where are you going to turn, when that happens? If there is only one way to be Black (or Jewish - I can only speak of my own experience), and you don't conform, you are really out of luck, because no other community will accept you as its own.
I am not worried about the politicians so much - public putdowns come with the job. Even so, I don't think calling somebody a race traitor is a valid way to criticize them. But in usage that Eru and others described, the word is used to put pressure on young people who do not engage in self-destructive behaviour, while at the same time justifying that behaviour in the putter-downers. How is a young person to defend against that?
I am also a bit put out with this whole White thing. I have five people in my department, all of whom are technically "white" (although some are pink and some are quite brown), but we have been born on three different continents and speak five different native languages. Where does this put us on that black and white TV that some people seem to view the world on?
I wouldn't use either word, casually or otherwise. My gut reaction to both is strong and negative, and I react to the o-word much stronger than to the n-word. Here's why.
N-word, when used by a non-Black person, is clearly a racial insult. Because you are of another race, you are inferior, it implies. I know from first-hand experience how that works, although in my case it was anti-Semitism rather than racism that I had to confront. The way to fight that put down is to claim your heritage with pride. It's hard but doable.
O-word, when used by one Black person to describe another, seems far more subtly poisonous. Now your own community is telling you that you don't belong. Where are you going to turn, when that happens? If there is only one way to be Black (or Jewish - I can only speak of my own experience), and you don't conform, you are really out of luck, because no other community will accept you as its own.
I am not worried about the politicians so much - public putdowns come with the job. Even so, I don't think calling somebody a race traitor is a valid way to criticize them. But in usage that Eru and others described, the word is used to put pressure on young people who do not engage in self-destructive behaviour, while at the same time justifying that behaviour in the putter-downers. How is a young person to defend against that?
I am also a bit put out with this whole White thing. I have five people in my department, all of whom are technically "white" (although some are pink and some are quite brown), but we have been born on three different continents and speak five different native languages. Where does this put us on that black and white TV that some people seem to view the world on?
If there was anything that depressed him more than his own cynicism, it was that quite often it still wasn't as cynical as real life.
Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!
Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!
Jn wrote:A White person is denigrated in a roundabout way by the o-word, and I suggest that the demonstrably more emotional response of our all-White membership (in this thread) to that word than to the N-word is because of it’s relationship to us and not because it denigrates Blacks or because it is unfashionable in having racial context.
Your explanation did help but this is where you lose me and I think almost anyone can see as plain as day how wrong this is. The N-word is very likely elicit extreme anger from any race. If the N-word had been used as casually here as the o-word was, we'd have a full-on flamewar on our hands right now. I can't imagine any of my white friends being anything but intensely angry at hearing someone called that.
(PS - I'm Hispanic.)
I wanna love somebody but I don't know how
I wanna throw my body in the river and drown
-The Decemberists
I wanna throw my body in the river and drown
-The Decemberists