1,2,3 strike out.

Basically liberal white people lecturing to other whites about how bad white people are and we need to learn and reflect and listen thus implying we are responsible in some way for the actions of a single murderous, terrible individual. Have seen many people calling out their friends on social media who have stayed silent.

To disagree with the premise of white privilege is to out yourself as a racist in 2020. Life, however, is not fair. There are too many privileges to count. Born in a first world country? Privilege. Born without any physical deformity? Privilege. Born attractive? Privilege. Born without the genes that will give you childhood cancer? Privilege. It goes on and on. Virtue signalling leftists are superficial.

Posted by tangplay on 6/2/2020 6:51:00 PM (view original):
I would love to see what you are hearing that from. I have heard that intersectionality is the study of how different "isms" like racism, sexism, classism, etc. correlate and how having more than one form of oppression impacts one's life, like being a black gay woman for instance.

Intersectionality is dividing into groups and then expecting homogeneous thought and action from those groups. I can literally divide people’s identities in an infinite amount of different ways. I’m an existentialist. We are all responsible for our own actions. I’m not responsible for any other WASP male (I guess I’m responsible for my children, but you get the point.) I’m not responsible for a jack leg vigilante in Brunswick, GA. I’m not responsible for an evil person in Minneapolis.

intersectionality is a euphemism for identity politics. Think about what Biden said. “You a‘int black if you don’t vote for me.” I remember when Herman Cain ran for president. People literally told me he “wasn’t a real black person.” What does that even mean? He looks black to me. This tribal mentality is very dangerous.

Using your example, every gay black woman faces different challenges. Every gay black woman is different. They act differently. They think differently. Intersectionality lumps them all together. This is wrong.

If we could just give the democrats 50 years, they would solve racism, poverty, taxes, jobs, national defense, space exploration, housing, education, health care and equality. I know they would because they've been saying it for the last 50...OH WAIT! NEVERMIND!

Re guitarguy and strikeout - seems to me that both of you are looking for things to be upset about. You are both really oversimplifying and misunderstanding the topic. I won't pretend to be an expert on intersectionality, but I do have more knowledge on it than the average person, I think.

Guitarguy - I am of the firm belief that anyone staying silent does just as much to support the status quo as those who take up arms to protect it. When you don't voice your opinion, you support whatever is currently going on. People have every right to call you out on it. Furthermore, you haven't given me a single example of a white liberal telling other white people that they are responsible for George Floyd and the like. Everything you said in the second paragraph is true. Not sure why you are complaining about it. If you want to talk about white privilege, we can. You won't like that discussion. Life isn't fair, but some people want to work to rectify that and work towards equal opportunity instead of just throwing up your arms and doing nothing. Yes, white people probably shouldn't speak on behalf of African Americans in terms of systemic racism (ironic, I know). People like you who clearly are only in this to look for things to be offended about are part of the problem.

Strikeout - I disagree on your assessment of intersectionality, though I understand where you are coming from. I don't think many people who study intersectionality would disagree with any of your statements, aside from it being dangerous, of course. If you provide me people who would say that every person's experience is the same based on their identity, I would disagree with those people. I don't think many experts make that argument.

Also, identity politics aren't inherently bad, it's all about whether you use them in a positive way, or in the Hitler way. I won't defend Joe Biden.

I’m actually not mad about anything. I know it’s the internet, but I don’t think my tone has sounded angry and if it has, it’s not. I’m not an emotional person.

As far as the oversimplification, it’s not a complex topic to begin with. Some people prefer to stick people into a group. I prefer to look at each individual.

Identity politics are bad for many reasons, but the main reason is that it’s used to silence dissenters. It divides people into oppressors and the oppressed based on their group. This is why it’s dangerous. I oppress no one, but because I’m a white male I’m viewed as an oppressor. Does that make sense? If not, I’ll give you a more detailed explanation, but I’m trying to work and debate at the same time.

Posted by tangplay on 6/2/2020 9:05:00 PM (view original):
Re guitarguy and strikeout - seems to me that both of you are looking for things to be upset about. You are both really oversimplifying and misunderstanding the topic. I won't pretend to be an expert on intersectionality, but I do have more knowledge on it than the average person, I think.

Guitarguy - I am of the firm belief that anyone staying silent does just as much to support the status quo as those who take up arms to protect it. When you don't voice your opinion, you support whatever is currently going on. People have every right to call you out on it. Furthermore, you haven't given me a single example of a white liberal telling other white people that they are responsible for George Floyd and the like. Everything you said in the second paragraph is true. Not sure why you are complaining about it. If you want to talk about white privilege, we can. You won't like that discussion. Life isn't fair, but some people want to work to rectify that and work towards equal opportunity instead of just throwing up your arms and doing nothing. Yes, white people probably shouldn't speak on behalf of African Americans in terms of systemic racism (ironic, I know). People like you who clearly are only in this to look for things to be offended about are part of the problem.

Strikeout - I disagree on your assessment of intersectionality, though I understand where you are coming from. I don't think many people who study intersectionality would disagree with any of your statements, aside from it being dangerous, of course. If you provide me people who would say that every person's experience is the same based on their identity, I would disagree with those people. I don't think many experts make that argument.

Also, identity politics aren't inherently bad, it's all about whether you use them in a positive way, or in the Hitler way. I won't defend Joe Biden.

In all seriousness, though I think we have some differences in worldview I very much respect the sincerity and reasonableness you bring in to conversations about these kind of divisive topics. I respect your opinions.

Why would you respect Tang’s opinion? Who does that? That’s dumb!

I appreciate people being able to have a reasonable discussion on the issues, especially the ability to construct an actual argument. Everyone who can make legitimate arguments that make me rethink my worldview has my respect. That includes strikeout, and probably will include guitarguy. Thanks, guys.

re strikeout, like I said, if you find people who lump others into groups and pretend that each individual experience is the same, I would disagree with them. Not sure they exist in these fields. I've made it pretty clear that one of my primary goals would be to equalize opportunity. We can't do that until we acknowledge that not everyone has equal opportunity, and part of that would be to recognize that on the whole, people of certain races probably have some similarities in their experiences. Every individual is different, but we can definitely see some common themes when looking at the bigger picture.

As for your second paragraph, I'm not sure how that dichotomy is inherent to identity politics. Calling all white people 'oppressors' is a negative use of the strategy, but not everyone using identity politics has to be negative. MLK used identity politics for good. You can use it to unite people of a certain race to gain more rights.

Apparently All Lives Don't Matter. Seems you can get fired for saying they do.

Long time Kings broadcaster Grant Napear was relieved of his duties at a radio station and stepped down from his position with the Kings after a Twitter interaction with former King DeMarcus Cousins in which he responded to Boogie with 'All Lives Matter..Every Single One!' when asked his thoughts on the Black Lives Matter movement.

Posted by tangplay on 6/2/2020 9:56:00 PM (view original):
I appreciate people being able to have a reasonable discussion on the issues, especially the ability to construct an actual argument. Everyone who can make legitimate arguments that make me rethink my worldview has my respect. That includes strikeout, and probably will include guitarguy. Thanks, guys.

re strikeout, like I said, if you find people who lump others into groups and pretend that each individual experience is the same, I would disagree with them. Not sure they exist in these fields. I've made it pretty clear that one of my primary goals would be to equalize opportunity. We can't do that until we acknowledge that not everyone has equal opportunity, and part of that would be to recognize that on the whole, people of certain races probably have some similarities in their experiences. Every individual is different, but we can definitely see some common themes when looking at the bigger picture.

As for your second paragraph, I'm not sure how that dichotomy is inherent to identity politics. Calling all white people 'oppressors' is a negative use of the strategy, but not everyone using identity politics has to be negative. MLK used identity politics for good. You can use it to unite people of a certain race to gain more rights.

I strongly disagree with your last paragraph. In fact, I think part of what made MLK so effective as a leader was how hard he worked to avoid identity politics. Much of the time his rhetoric was intentionally inclusive. King and the SCLC rose to national prominence because of the Children's Campaign. This was brilliant reframing to appeal to moderate white audiences. Instead of making it about the oppression of black people, he changed the narrative to be about police using hoses and German shepherds against children. That message had much broader appeal.

The problem with identity politics is what I talked about over the weekend. Humans are naturally hardwired to prefer ingroups to outgroups. When you frame issues consistently in terms of race, you force people to think about race, and on a subconscious level they will then demonstrably prefer their own race. When you have one race with an outsized share of wealth and power, the last thing you want is for them to be thinking in this way. Again, this is something King understood. This is why at the end of his life, once the Jim Crow laws on the books had been brought down, he was working with the Poor People's Campaign. I am also a firm believer that once you have overtly racist laws off the books, you're much more likely to make real progress by framing in terms of big circles, not in racial terms.

As an aside relevant to the question of whether everyone white is being asked to take responsibility for the actions of (not really one, but a subset of) white people - I think it's very clear that there are many people who believe the answer to that question to be yes. I don't really use FB, but my wife works for them, so I see some of what goes on. Something very close to this pair of sentences keeps popping up. "White people suck. Just accept that." If a white person posts it, whatever, I can move on. But a lot of those people posting this are not white. And I think it's pretty clear that if a white person posted that about any other race he/she would be absolutely roasted.

So while not particularly problematic, to answer the question on the thread title, yes, it is racist. It is very clear that you are "allowed" to say things about white people in this country that you can't say about any other race. You are also allowed to say some things about Asians you probably couldn't get away with saying about other minorities. If the social rules are different by race, that is racism. It just isn't so dangerous as racism expressed against less-privileged groups, because in reality people expressing this viewpoint are unlikely to be causing tangible harms to the people they're denigrating.

Good point about MLK

Posted by all3 on 6/3/2020 10:24:00 AM (view original):
Apparently All Lives Don't Matter. Seems you can get fired for saying they do.

Long time Kings broadcaster Grant Napear was relieved of his duties at a radio station and stepped down from his position with the Kings after a Twitter interaction with former King DeMarcus Cousins in which he responded to Boogie with 'All Lives Matter..Every Single One!' when asked his thoughts on the Black Lives Matter movement.

did you bother reading the rest of the story? Many of the African American players on the Kings said Napier has some racial issues and this is not the first time. Whether or not that is true, I don't know, but there apparently more to the story than Napier just saying all lives matter

Posted by strikeout26 on 6/2/2020 5:47:00 PM (view original):
And also, you do hear people apologizing for their race and ancestors. Intersectionality is a dangerous thing. I’m not apologizing for something a whack job cop did. I didn’t stand on a guys neck. My race is not who I am. We have a bad habit of making one’s race their identity, when in reality it is nothing more than an identifier.