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Read the rules in the OP before posting, please.In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up! NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action. |
That graph is clearly fucking ridiculous, and I think anyone who thinks otherwise is being intentionally disingenuous because I refuse to believe anyone is that ignorant.
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On December 11 2017 08:38 mozoku wrote:
Shouldn't it be disconcerting for someone maintaining a certain view if they can't come up with a intellectually rigorous defense of said view? Does not indicate problems, if not in the underlying position, at least in one's understanding of the position?
Isn't that reason enough to care?
There's no point engaging with an unapologetic racist on their points as to why they're correct. They're never going to be arguing from good faith, there's plenty of writeups about why you don't engage with antisemites or white nationalists on their arguments. Isn't to say you don't engage with them, but you don't engage with them about why "whites are awesome".
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On December 11 2017 08:27 xDaunt wrote:Show nested quote +On December 11 2017 08:22 Nyxisto wrote:On December 11 2017 08:11 xDaunt wrote:
For all of the bitching and hand-wringing that I see from you leftists regarding my cultural arguments, what I have not seen are any compelling rebuttals. Why don’t you put down the tissue and get to work? The constant crying is getting old. If you want a hint on where to start, go look at Igne’s posts. However, his posts will only take you so far given that he understands that his critique is grounded in Western culture, which obviously makes arguing against my ultimate point rather difficult. Because nobody cares. You might think that you're constructing a sophisticated argument here or something, but nobody is going to go through pages of the same dreg we've been hearing from reactionaries for decades. Nobody is crying or a leftist, most people are just tired of it. No one cares? Seriously? The sheer volume of responses that I receive on this clearly demonstrates otherwise.
Everyone's bored and doesn't care if western civ led the world in x, y, and z.
Except when everyone wants to point out their two reasons why the argument is wrong, any conclusions are impossible, or the argument is completely absurd.
On December 11 2017 07:08 Grumbels wrote:
It is not disputed that the West dominated the last three centuries and was at the center of many developments in science, music, arts and so on. This is what accounts for the many “significant figures” originated here.
Didn't expect you to cite a graph you basically agreed with.
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Its a tired argument. If we're just looking at India by itself, it contributed significantly to the development of the "West". India's advancements are as advanced as any Western advancements but they're barely taught in Western circles because they're not the West. Its only a recent phenomenon that historians are trying to stop deifying the Greek philosophers and putting more emphasis on Eastern ideas where they likely got their start from anyway.
India had figured out a heliocentric model, a decimal system, the use of zero as a mathematical figure, numerous different surgery procedures, refinement of raw resources from the creation of steel to the creation of sugar and the concept of atoms (even centuries before the Greeks!). Written records are spotty because people couldn't read, were destroyed or lost during regime changes. Whatever was left was taken by the Muslims and they adjusted them accordingly. Then the European Renaissance found Greek/Roman/Muslim records and adjusted them accordingly. We at school are taught the European Renaissance version where the Greeks and Romans are the progenitors of all modern science and society where that isn't exactly true.
I dunno about the graph but I don't know how anyone can make an argument that the West wouldn't dominate that graph. This is the one period where everything is not only documented and recorded but also available to read by a mostly literate population. Its just pretty misleading because we just know little about important Chinese and Indian figures for the before-mentioned reasons.
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On December 11 2017 08:40 kollin wrote:
That graph is clearly fucking ridiculous, and I think anyone who thinks otherwise is being intentionally disingenuous because I refuse to believe anyone is that ignorant.
A graph can be used as an effective visual tool to express an idea or concept. Its utility isn't limited to merely representing data.
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On December 11 2017 08:40 Nevuk wrote:Show nested quote +On December 11 2017 08:38 mozoku wrote:
Shouldn't it be disconcerting for someone maintaining a certain view if they can't come up with a intellectually rigorous defense of said view? Does not indicate problems, if not in the underlying position, at least in one's understanding of the position?
Isn't that reason enough to care? There's no point engaging with an unapologetic racist on their points as to why they're correct. They're never going to be arguing from good faith, there's plenty of writeups about why you don't engage with antisemites or white nationalists on their arguments. Isn't to say you don't engage with them, but you don't engage with them about why "whites are awesome".
If you think that my argument is inherently racist, then it should be pretty easy for you to blow it apart, don’t you think? And if it’s not, then perhaps you should strongly reconsider some of your premises.
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On December 11 2017 08:47 xDaunt wrote:Show nested quote +On December 11 2017 08:40 Nevuk wrote:On December 11 2017 08:38 mozoku wrote:
Shouldn't it be disconcerting for someone maintaining a certain view if they can't come up with a intellectually rigorous defense of said view? Does not indicate problems, if not in the underlying position, at least in one's understanding of the position?
Isn't that reason enough to care? There's no point engaging with an unapologetic racist on their points as to why they're correct. They're never going to be arguing from good faith, there's plenty of writeups about why you don't engage with antisemites or white nationalists on their arguments. Isn't to say you don't engage with them, but you don't engage with them about why "whites are awesome". If you think that my argument is inherently racist, then it should be pretty easy for you to blow it apart, don’t you think? And if it’s not, then perhaps you should strongly reconsider some of your premises.
I think its easy to latch onto "its a racist argument" because its because its a inherently a misleading argument that ignores the difficulties of recording ancient (and even medieval) history. First of all, people generally know nothing about non-European figures whether due to poor record keeping or general lack of interest. Second of all, ancient figures didn't really live in a stable environment where their records wouldn't just be adjusted or sold as their own invention.
How many people are away that a movable type printing press was invented by poor Bi Sheng in China some 400 years before Gutenberg? I can bet you that less than 1% of the USA and Europe are aware of this.
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On December 11 2017 08:59 dickofhistory1000bc wrote:Show nested quote +On December 11 2017 08:47 xDaunt wrote:On December 11 2017 08:40 Nevuk wrote:On December 11 2017 08:38 mozoku wrote:
Shouldn't it be disconcerting for someone maintaining a certain view if they can't come up with a intellectually rigorous defense of said view? Does not indicate problems, if not in the underlying position, at least in one's understanding of the position?
Isn't that reason enough to care? There's no point engaging with an unapologetic racist on their points as to why they're correct. They're never going to be arguing from good faith, there's plenty of writeups about why you don't engage with antisemites or white nationalists on their arguments. Isn't to say you don't engage with them, but you don't engage with them about why "whites are awesome". If you think that my argument is inherently racist, then it should be pretty easy for you to blow it apart, don’t you think? And if it’s not, then perhaps you should strongly reconsider some of your premises. I think its because its because its a pretty misleading argument. First of all, people generally know nothing about non-European figures whether due to poor record keeping or general lack of interest. Second of all, ancient figures didn't really live in a stable environment where their records wouldn't just be adjusted or sold as their own invention. How many people are away that a movable type printing press was invented by poor Bi Sheng in China some 400 years before Gutenberg? I can bet you that less than 1% of the USA and Europe are aware of this.
I’ll make the same comment to you that I made to GH. You are going to run into real problems rebutting my argument if the thrust of your attack is an analysis of pre-industrial cultures.
Why don’t we start here: do you accept the premise that one culture can be superior to another?
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On December 11 2017 05:49 Jockmcplop wrote:Show nested quote +On December 11 2017 05:41 kollin wrote:On December 11 2017 05:37 Jockmcplop wrote:On December 11 2017 05:14 Schmobutzen wrote:
I was nodding to jockmcplops answer along, up top the point of Charles Murray. Murray is anything but a racist or a right winger. I've read The Bell Curve and was baffled that this book produced that outcry. If you read or hear his interviews, you will quickly see that grew is a very decent guy, that stumbled into an angry hornets nest, which he and his fellow colleague thought that they were circling, because of their carefullness, but never imagined that those were stimmed hornets nests. I'll reply to Igne's long post later, but the short answer to this is that the article he posted and Murray's work have one massive thing in common. They attribute to skin colour what they should be attributing to culture. They are confusing skin pigment with cultural phenomena. I can't see how it makes sense to assume that whiteness is innately different from blackness instead of assuming that the culture to which white people are more likely to belong is completely different and encourages different attributes to the cultures that POC probably belong to. Using culture as an explanation instead of skin colour works much better, because you don't have to jump through hoops to explain things you just follow the cultural phenomena and they explain the issue for you. I haven't read the article, but the broader idea of race being a social construct is literally what you're saying right now. That might be true in some sense, but it isn't how the idea has been expressed in academic circles at all, quite the opposite. They use skin colour as the arbitrary base for social constructivism in order to wage a race war. Whiteness isn't a social construct, American whiteness is. There is no 'whiteness' to speak of except an expression of genetic information in skin pigment. The language behind the theory is all wrong, it always makes huge, incorrect generalizations because it draws the lines between people in completely the wrong places. Ignoring these cultural differences is literally just a way to propagandize for a race war. ps the race war I'm talking about was started by white America, I'm not denying that at all.
come on dude this is such egregious misapprehension its hard to even take you seriously. academics do not reduce race to skin color. the two are inextricably entwined. how do you even dare to talk about "the language" of the arguments when your own language is so riven by internal contradiction and confusion itself? who is the one really making "huge incorrect generalizations" here?
@danglars
obviously race is not the ONLY encoded "imagery" which is embedded in people's presentation to others. thats absurd. its only "arbitrary" in the sense that it is what we are talking about right now. its reality as a subjective (in the sense of "subject," you might prefer some other term) force field intersecting culture is not arbitrary, in the sense that its felt effects are real and significant.
im sorry to inform both of you that this world we all share is actually pretty complicated.
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On December 11 2017 08:47 xDaunt wrote:Show nested quote +On December 11 2017 08:40 Nevuk wrote:On December 11 2017 08:38 mozoku wrote:
Shouldn't it be disconcerting for someone maintaining a certain view if they can't come up with a intellectually rigorous defense of said view? Does not indicate problems, if not in the underlying position, at least in one's understanding of the position?
Isn't that reason enough to care? There's no point engaging with an unapologetic racist on their points as to why they're correct. They're never going to be arguing from good faith, there's plenty of writeups about why you don't engage with antisemites or white nationalists on their arguments. Isn't to say you don't engage with them, but you don't engage with them about why "whites are awesome". If you think that my argument is inherently racist, then it should be pretty easy for you to blow it apart, don’t you think? And if it’s not, then perhaps you should strongly reconsider some of your premises.
this is not worth arguing about. the graph is basically a graph with westerness on the y axis and showing that europe is the most western. yes we know.
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On December 11 2017 09:01 xDaunt wrote:Show nested quote +On December 11 2017 08:59 dickofhistory1000bc wrote:On December 11 2017 08:47 xDaunt wrote:On December 11 2017 08:40 Nevuk wrote:On December 11 2017 08:38 mozoku wrote:
Shouldn't it be disconcerting for someone maintaining a certain view if they can't come up with a intellectually rigorous defense of said view? Does not indicate problems, if not in the underlying position, at least in one's understanding of the position?
Isn't that reason enough to care? There's no point engaging with an unapologetic racist on their points as to why they're correct. They're never going to be arguing from good faith, there's plenty of writeups about why you don't engage with antisemites or white nationalists on their arguments. Isn't to say you don't engage with them, but you don't engage with them about why "whites are awesome". If you think that my argument is inherently racist, then it should be pretty easy for you to blow it apart, don’t you think? And if it’s not, then perhaps you should strongly reconsider some of your premises. I think its because its because its a pretty misleading argument. First of all, people generally know nothing about non-European figures whether due to poor record keeping or general lack of interest. Second of all, ancient figures didn't really live in a stable environment where their records wouldn't just be adjusted or sold as their own invention. How many people are away that a movable type printing press was invented by poor Bi Sheng in China some 400 years before Gutenberg? I can bet you that less than 1% of the USA and Europe are aware of this. I’ll make the same comment to you that I made to GH. You are going to run into real problems rebutting my argument if the thrust of your attack is an analysis of Bronze Age cultures. Why don’t we start here: do you accept the premise that one culture can be superior to another?
These aren't Bronze Age cultures. Unless the Song Dynasty and Ming Dynasty existed in the Bronze Age (lol). The Ming Dynasty in particular was an explorationist civilization that eventually adopted a contractionist policy because they saw the rest of the world as barbaric and their culture to be superior to all others. Its more complicated than that but everyone knows that sort of thinking didn't work well for them.
You can consider a culture "superior" to another but all dominant "superior" cultures are really amalgamations of cultures not unique to its own. In the modern day, the Independence of India resulted in the United States poaching a significant number of premiere Indian scientists. Are these significant Indian scientists (figures) a product of India, the British Empire or the United States in that graph? Its a dumb qualification used to argue that the rest of the world hasn't really contributed anything which is especially not true in the Information Age.
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On December 11 2017 09:22 IgnE wrote:Show nested quote +On December 11 2017 08:47 xDaunt wrote:On December 11 2017 08:40 Nevuk wrote:On December 11 2017 08:38 mozoku wrote:
Shouldn't it be disconcerting for someone maintaining a certain view if they can't come up with a intellectually rigorous defense of said view? Does not indicate problems, if not in the underlying position, at least in one's understanding of the position?
Isn't that reason enough to care? There's no point engaging with an unapologetic racist on their points as to why they're correct. They're never going to be arguing from good faith, there's plenty of writeups about why you don't engage with antisemites or white nationalists on their arguments. Isn't to say you don't engage with them, but you don't engage with them about why "whites are awesome". If you think that my argument is inherently racist, then it should be pretty easy for you to blow it apart, don’t you think? And if it’s not, then perhaps you should strongly reconsider some of your premises. this is not worth arguing about. the graph is basically a graph with westerness on the y axis and showing that europe is the most western. yes we know.
For what it’s worth, I don’t think that reliance upon the number of “significant figures” is a particularly compelling argument for Western culture. It’s the other stuff that I have talked about previously that matters more.
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On December 11 2017 09:21 IgnE wrote:Show nested quote +On December 11 2017 05:49 Jockmcplop wrote:On December 11 2017 05:41 kollin wrote:On December 11 2017 05:37 Jockmcplop wrote:On December 11 2017 05:14 Schmobutzen wrote:
I was nodding to jockmcplops answer along, up top the point of Charles Murray. Murray is anything but a racist or a right winger. I've read The Bell Curve and was baffled that this book produced that outcry. If you read or hear his interviews, you will quickly see that grew is a very decent guy, that stumbled into an angry hornets nest, which he and his fellow colleague thought that they were circling, because of their carefullness, but never imagined that those were stimmed hornets nests. I'll reply to Igne's long post later, but the short answer to this is that the article he posted and Murray's work have one massive thing in common. They attribute to skin colour what they should be attributing to culture. They are confusing skin pigment with cultural phenomena. I can't see how it makes sense to assume that whiteness is innately different from blackness instead of assuming that the culture to which white people are more likely to belong is completely different and encourages different attributes to the cultures that POC probably belong to. Using culture as an explanation instead of skin colour works much better, because you don't have to jump through hoops to explain things you just follow the cultural phenomena and they explain the issue for you. I haven't read the article, but the broader idea of race being a social construct is literally what you're saying right now. That might be true in some sense, but it isn't how the idea has been expressed in academic circles at all, quite the opposite. They use skin colour as the arbitrary base for social constructivism in order to wage a race war. Whiteness isn't a social construct, American whiteness is. There is no 'whiteness' to speak of except an expression of genetic information in skin pigment. The language behind the theory is all wrong, it always makes huge, incorrect generalizations because it draws the lines between people in completely the wrong places. Ignoring these cultural differences is literally just a way to propagandize for a race war. ps the race war I'm talking about was started by white America, I'm not denying that at all. come on dude this is such egregious misapprehension its hard to even take you seriously. academics do not reduce race to skin color. the two are inextricably entwined. how do you even dare to talk about "the language" of the arguments when your own language is so riven by internal contradiction and confusion itself? who is the one really making "huge incorrect generalizations" here?
So is whiteness a social construct?
What does whiteness in this context mean to you? White culture (this doesn't exist)?
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On December 11 2017 09:23 dickofhistory1000bc wrote:Show nested quote +On December 11 2017 09:01 xDaunt wrote:On December 11 2017 08:59 dickofhistory1000bc wrote:On December 11 2017 08:47 xDaunt wrote:On December 11 2017 08:40 Nevuk wrote:On December 11 2017 08:38 mozoku wrote:
Shouldn't it be disconcerting for someone maintaining a certain view if they can't come up with a intellectually rigorous defense of said view? Does not indicate problems, if not in the underlying position, at least in one's understanding of the position?
Isn't that reason enough to care? There's no point engaging with an unapologetic racist on their points as to why they're correct. They're never going to be arguing from good faith, there's plenty of writeups about why you don't engage with antisemites or white nationalists on their arguments. Isn't to say you don't engage with them, but you don't engage with them about why "whites are awesome". If you think that my argument is inherently racist, then it should be pretty easy for you to blow it apart, don’t you think? And if it’s not, then perhaps you should strongly reconsider some of your premises. I think its because its because its a pretty misleading argument. First of all, people generally know nothing about non-European figures whether due to poor record keeping or general lack of interest. Second of all, ancient figures didn't really live in a stable environment where their records wouldn't just be adjusted or sold as their own invention. How many people are away that a movable type printing press was invented by poor Bi Sheng in China some 400 years before Gutenberg? I can bet you that less than 1% of the USA and Europe are aware of this. I’ll make the same comment to you that I made to GH. You are going to run into real problems rebutting my argument if the thrust of your attack is an analysis of Bronze Age cultures. Why don’t we start here: do you accept the premise that one culture can be superior to another? These aren't Bronze Age cultures. Unless the Song Dynasty and Ming Dynasty existed in the Bronze Age (lol). The Ming Dynasty in particular was an explorationist civilization that eventually adopted a contractionist policy because they saw the rest of the world as barbaric and their culture to be superior to all others. Its more complicated than that but everyone knows that sort of thinking didn't work well for them. You can consider a culture "superior" to another but all dominant "superior" cultures are really amalgamations of cultures not unique to its own. Even in the modern day, the Independence of India resulted in the United States poaching a significant number of premiere Indian scientists. Are these significant Indian scientists (figures) a product of India, the British Empire or the United States in that graph? Its a dumb qualification used to argue that the rest of the world hasn't really contributed anything which is especially not true in the Information Age.
Are you a cultural relativist or not?
Relying upon the historical achievements of non-Western cultures isn’t going to help you because it begs the question of why the non-Western cultures were so badly eclipsed by the Western ones.
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On December 11 2017 09:31 Jockmcplop wrote:Show nested quote +On December 11 2017 09:21 IgnE wrote:On December 11 2017 05:49 Jockmcplop wrote:On December 11 2017 05:41 kollin wrote:On December 11 2017 05:37 Jockmcplop wrote:On December 11 2017 05:14 Schmobutzen wrote:
I was nodding to jockmcplops answer along, up top the point of Charles Murray. Murray is anything but a racist or a right winger. I've read The Bell Curve and was baffled that this book produced that outcry. If you read or hear his interviews, you will quickly see that grew is a very decent guy, that stumbled into an angry hornets nest, which he and his fellow colleague thought that they were circling, because of their carefullness, but never imagined that those were stimmed hornets nests. I'll reply to Igne's long post later, but the short answer to this is that the article he posted and Murray's work have one massive thing in common. They attribute to skin colour what they should be attributing to culture. They are confusing skin pigment with cultural phenomena. I can't see how it makes sense to assume that whiteness is innately different from blackness instead of assuming that the culture to which white people are more likely to belong is completely different and encourages different attributes to the cultures that POC probably belong to. Using culture as an explanation instead of skin colour works much better, because you don't have to jump through hoops to explain things you just follow the cultural phenomena and they explain the issue for you. I haven't read the article, but the broader idea of race being a social construct is literally what you're saying right now. That might be true in some sense, but it isn't how the idea has been expressed in academic circles at all, quite the opposite. They use skin colour as the arbitrary base for social constructivism in order to wage a race war. Whiteness isn't a social construct, American whiteness is. There is no 'whiteness' to speak of except an expression of genetic information in skin pigment. The language behind the theory is all wrong, it always makes huge, incorrect generalizations because it draws the lines between people in completely the wrong places. Ignoring these cultural differences is literally just a way to propagandize for a race war. ps the race war I'm talking about was started by white America, I'm not denying that at all. come on dude this is such egregious misapprehension its hard to even take you seriously. academics do not reduce race to skin color. the two are inextricably entwined. how do you even dare to talk about "the language" of the arguments when your own language is so riven by internal contradiction and confusion itself? who is the one really making "huge incorrect generalizations" here? So is whiteness a social construct? What does whiteness in this context mean to you? White culture (this doesn't exist)?
youll have to tell me what your last question is supposed to mean. are you saying there is nothing that we could call "white culture?"
whiteness kind of functions as a negative signifier. the absence of non-whiteness, hence the simple human being. a tabula rasa. the undifferentiated exemplar.
did you even read the 5 page essay that i linked and that weve spent so much time going back and forth on?
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Because we were the first to have badass (military) technology to pound everyone into submission with.
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The notion that "the West" is somehow the inherently superior culture because of its advancements in the past three centuries relies on the same flawed approach regarding the notion that rich people are somehow inherently better people. In both cases, the circumstances in which we find ourselves contribute as much to our advancement in life as our personal attributes (intellect, perseverance, etc). The circumstances - which I don't care to define at the moment - differ when talking about an entire nation or culture versus an individual, but I believe the premise remains the same.
Can you imagine considering yourself an inferior human being because you were born elsewhere? It's ridiculous. The Chinese recognize they failed in the time period previously, but they are stepping up their game now. The fact that they're capable of digging themselves out of that hole should dispel any notion of inherit inferiority of the east - and thus superiority of the west.
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On December 11 2017 09:36 IgnE wrote:Show nested quote +On December 11 2017 09:31 Jockmcplop wrote:On December 11 2017 09:21 IgnE wrote:On December 11 2017 05:49 Jockmcplop wrote:On December 11 2017 05:41 kollin wrote:On December 11 2017 05:37 Jockmcplop wrote:On December 11 2017 05:14 Schmobutzen wrote:
I was nodding to jockmcplops answer along, up top the point of Charles Murray. Murray is anything but a racist or a right winger. I've read The Bell Curve and was baffled that this book produced that outcry. If you read or hear his interviews, you will quickly see that grew is a very decent guy, that stumbled into an angry hornets nest, which he and his fellow colleague thought that they were circling, because of their carefullness, but never imagined that those were stimmed hornets nests. I'll reply to Igne's long post later, but the short answer to this is that the article he posted and Murray's work have one massive thing in common. They attribute to skin colour what they should be attributing to culture. They are confusing skin pigment with cultural phenomena. I can't see how it makes sense to assume that whiteness is innately different from blackness instead of assuming that the culture to which white people are more likely to belong is completely different and encourages different attributes to the cultures that POC probably belong to. Using culture as an explanation instead of skin colour works much better, because you don't have to jump through hoops to explain things you just follow the cultural phenomena and they explain the issue for you. I haven't read the article, but the broader idea of race being a social construct is literally what you're saying right now. That might be true in some sense, but it isn't how the idea has been expressed in academic circles at all, quite the opposite. They use skin colour as the arbitrary base for social constructivism in order to wage a race war. Whiteness isn't a social construct, American whiteness is. There is no 'whiteness' to speak of except an expression of genetic information in skin pigment. The language behind the theory is all wrong, it always makes huge, incorrect generalizations because it draws the lines between people in completely the wrong places. Ignoring these cultural differences is literally just a way to propagandize for a race war. ps the race war I'm talking about was started by white America, I'm not denying that at all. come on dude this is such egregious misapprehension its hard to even take you seriously. academics do not reduce race to skin color. the two are inextricably entwined. how do you even dare to talk about "the language" of the arguments when your own language is so riven by internal contradiction and confusion itself? who is the one really making "huge incorrect generalizations" here? So is whiteness a social construct? What does whiteness in this context mean to you? White culture (this doesn't exist)? youll have to tell me what your last question is supposed to mean. are you saying there is nothing that we could call "white culture?" whiteness kind of functions as a negative signifier. the absence of non-whiteness, hence the simple human being. a tabula rasa. the undifferentiated exemplar. did you even read the 5 page essay that i linked and that weve spent so much time going back and forth on?
Yes I read it and I critiqued it but you keep insisting that I didn't read it or that I don't understand it because I pointed out its obvious flaws.
What I'm saying, and I'll try and keep this extremely simple so as to avoid any more accusations that I haven't read or don't understand the article, is that there isn't a 'white culture' or a series of symbols that is associated with 'whiteness'.
This is because whiteness in itself is expressed in hundreds of completely different and contradictory cultural outputs. There is a 'white american culture' which you could reasonably define.
There is a 'white English culture' which actually shares a fair amount with some white European cultures.
To try and define 'whiteness' as a series of symbols is as stupid as trying to define 'non whiteness' as a series of symbols.
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On December 11 2017 09:49 Jockmcplop wrote:Show nested quote +On December 11 2017 09:36 IgnE wrote:On December 11 2017 09:31 Jockmcplop wrote:On December 11 2017 09:21 IgnE wrote:On December 11 2017 05:49 Jockmcplop wrote:On December 11 2017 05:41 kollin wrote:On December 11 2017 05:37 Jockmcplop wrote:On December 11 2017 05:14 Schmobutzen wrote:
I was nodding to jockmcplops answer along, up top the point of Charles Murray. Murray is anything but a racist or a right winger. I've read The Bell Curve and was baffled that this book produced that outcry. If you read or hear his interviews, you will quickly see that grew is a very decent guy, that stumbled into an angry hornets nest, which he and his fellow colleague thought that they were circling, because of their carefullness, but never imagined that those were stimmed hornets nests. I'll reply to Igne's long post later, but the short answer to this is that the article he posted and Murray's work have one massive thing in common. They attribute to skin colour what they should be attributing to culture. They are confusing skin pigment with cultural phenomena. I can't see how it makes sense to assume that whiteness is innately different from blackness instead of assuming that the culture to which white people are more likely to belong is completely different and encourages different attributes to the cultures that POC probably belong to. Using culture as an explanation instead of skin colour works much better, because you don't have to jump through hoops to explain things you just follow the cultural phenomena and they explain the issue for you. I haven't read the article, but the broader idea of race being a social construct is literally what you're saying right now. That might be true in some sense, but it isn't how the idea has been expressed in academic circles at all, quite the opposite. They use skin colour as the arbitrary base for social constructivism in order to wage a race war. Whiteness isn't a social construct, American whiteness is. There is no 'whiteness' to speak of except an expression of genetic information in skin pigment. The language behind the theory is all wrong, it always makes huge, incorrect generalizations because it draws the lines between people in completely the wrong places. Ignoring these cultural differences is literally just a way to propagandize for a race war. ps the race war I'm talking about was started by white America, I'm not denying that at all. come on dude this is such egregious misapprehension its hard to even take you seriously. academics do not reduce race to skin color. the two are inextricably entwined. how do you even dare to talk about "the language" of the arguments when your own language is so riven by internal contradiction and confusion itself? who is the one really making "huge incorrect generalizations" here? So is whiteness a social construct? What does whiteness in this context mean to you? White culture (this doesn't exist)? youll have to tell me what your last question is supposed to mean. are you saying there is nothing that we could call "white culture?" whiteness kind of functions as a negative signifier. the absence of non-whiteness, hence the simple human being. a tabula rasa. the undifferentiated exemplar. did you even read the 5 page essay that i linked and that weve spent so much time going back and forth on? Yes I read it and I critiqued it but you keep insisting that I didn't read it or that I don't understand it because it pointed out its obvious flaws. What I'm saying, and I'll try and keep this extremely simple so as to avoid any more accusations that I haven't read or don't understand the article, is that there isn't a 'white culture' or a series of symbols that is associated with 'whiteness'. This is because whiteness in itself is expressed in hundreds of completely different and contradictory cultural outputs. There is a 'white american culture' which you could reasonably define. There is a 'white English culture' which actually shares a fair amount with some white European cultures. To try and define 'whiteness' as a series of symbols is as stupid as trying to define 'non whiteness' as a series of symbols.
The reason why he has trouble with the notion that you read the article isn't because your argument is so flawless, it's because it has little connexion with what was said in the article.
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EPT
