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Came across this article today, seems relevant to the current focus of the discussion.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/09/the-lefts-attack-on-color-blindness-goes-too-far/403477/

 

This is something on my mind because it addresses all of my discomfort holding discussion on this forum.  Still pondering on that bit a lot cause on one hand to talk about big pictures things have to be generalized, but that's still highly troubling.  Technically intersectionality ought to prevent much of such spill over but it is something I feel like I so rarely see (for specifics, when we talk about colonialism and its impact, Japan is like, never brought up as a colonial power).

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This is something on my mind because it addresses all of my discomfort holding discussion on this forum.  Still pondering on that bit a lot cause on one hand to talk about big pictures things have to be generalized, but that's still highly troubling.  Technically intersectionality ought to prevent much of such spill over but it is something I feel like I so rarely see (for specifics, when we talk about colonialism and its impact, Japan is like, never brought up as a colonial power).

 

That's probably a function of this being a primarily US centered forum, and most of us (myself included) not having much knowledge of Japan's history or the larger history of Asia.  Not to mention that the material covered in US history classes would have you believe basically everything east of Turkey just popped into existence during World War 2.  Since the topic of cultural appropriation and colonialism is so reliant on specifics, is there anywhere you could recommend going to learn more about this?

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That's probably a function of this being a primarily US centered forum, and most of us (myself included) not having much knowledge of Japan's history or the larger history of Asia.  Not to mention that the material covered in US history classes would have you believe basically everything east of Turkey just popped into existence during World War 2.  Since the topic of cultural appropriation and colonialism is so reliant on specifics, is there anywhere you could recommend going to learn more about this?

 

I'm not even close to being an expert, it's just difference in perspective.  Growing up in korea, the face of colonialism was Japan, and USA is the liberator.  Cold War globalization was USA protection against China/North, and hyper rapid development post WW2 meant while being a historically a colonial victim with even few surviving members of such times (my granparents who are still somehow alive lived through Japanese occupation), talking about colonialism as some sort of identity is also extremely jarring.  Then there is the surrealness for the current gen like until early 1980s the country was ran by dictators.  It is still fucking weird that one more infamous dictator's daughter is the elected president...

 

Like here and there people talk about getting rid of marks from colonialism like reviving true Tae Kwon Do (modern version is straight up clone of Karate because original is thought to be completely gotten lost during the occupation), there is that island (Liancourt Rocks?) that every year riles people up against Japan, there was that bit around late 1990s of renaming the elementary school system because name was japanese, and they wanted to either demolish or do something with the Japanese occupation HQ (one silly idea even talked about lowering it to the ground and putting glass floor on top so koreans would be able to look 'down' on it).

 

Then you have your hyper racism, depicting chinese and pigs and japanese as some fanatical suicidal dogs, everyone not korean as inferior.

 

Japanese colonialism and post WW2 (technically facilitated by Japanese colonialism itself to a degree) hyper rapid economic growth really throws wrench into lot of white-colonialism-to-non-white interpretation I read here, and hence my major discomfort on putting so much emphasis on 'white' ethnic identity to imperialism.

 

Edit: to provide another contextual difference, I've noticed that in the west there is lot of echoing back to the Roman Empire... in korea it is actually China that's seen as the de-facto historical imperial entity with more lasting history, and instead of Caesar with his conquest of Gaul and fight against Pompeii, it's Romance of the Three Kingdoms with Liu Bei vs Cao Cao.  So in a way, modern growth of China is not even 'rise of china' as headlines read in western papers... rather it's china returning to normal history with its defeat against western colonial powers seen as more of historical oddity.

 

Obviously not everyone in Korea see things the way I describe, and I kinda had to over simplify lot of complex moods and views.

 

Edit2: Oh and founding father thing with USA is also kinda interesting because the 'founding father' of Korea are either suicide bombers/assassins against Japanese authority (I mean American ones were rebels but it ultimately cumulated into more conventional struggle with most of them taking part in nation building post independence) or some fictional dude born out of a fucking egg :x

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I want to know how many people will gleefully agree with that article, and then swear blind that there is no such thing as modern cultural appropriation.

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Charles Babbage's "Thinkpiece Engine" was a miracle of computing at the time of its creation. It allowed simple polynomial functions to be processed through a printing press and expressed as treatises on the noble struggle of living like an Ancient Roman.

 

Some say that the idea was stolen from Ada Lovelace, but I've read primary sources where she explicitly writes "That one, he can have."

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http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2015/09/10/439247027/why-a-white-poet-posed-as-asian-to-get-published-and-whats-wrong-with-that

 

The idea actually started when [Asian American Writer's Workshop] staff member Jyothi Natarajan mentioned that people always whitened her name to "Dorothy." By using a white pen name, you could dabble in being "normal" and reject it, laughing at how silly such a desire would be. And so what about the pen name Yi-Fen Chou, used by Michael Derrick Hudson? If you know Chinese, you know it actually means "a piece of stink."

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A particularly bizarre trope is that refugees are not victims of war but are in fact all body-builders who are going to come over here and stomp around British towns inflicting their severe roid-rage on everyone. They should obviously take those bulging biceps and punch Assad's barrel-bombs out of the sky...

Quite a few of the memes I found try and dehumanise refugees in Europe by claiming they are all cowardly men who have left behind women and children in war-zones.

http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/kleinfeld-refugee-memes-debunking-846

Can we stop using the word migrant and start using refugees? Because that's what they fucking are.

The word migrant is so problematic because of the way it gets used: to make people with their own stories and experiences seem like a mindless, faceless horde that will kill, rape and pillage Europe; that will have a negative effect on the economy--which they do fuck not; and are taking away rights and privileges from good white ol'Europe folk.

Fuckin' hell.

Edit: http://www.aljazeera.com/blogs/editors-blog/2015/08/al-jazeera-mediterranean-migrants-150820082226309.html

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Holy fucking shit, this article.

Let's not even bother going into the body of text itself, which is basically an instructions directed towards marginalized people to "harden up" and stop standing up for themselves and focus on the juxtaposition of the headline and the image in the header:

0L4i76y.png

I suppose it is possible that the author has simply never watched that little TV show called "The News" as, otherwise, she'd know that a lot of grown-ups are already resulting to firearms to address attacks on their dignity and, thus, would have been confronted by the notion that, perhaps, trying to create a more empathetic society might not be such a bad thing after all.

 

And you'll be shocked to hear that I found this article on reddit, /r/TrueReddit no less, at the eye of a veritable hurricane of sage nods and golf claps. 

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Holy fucking shit, this article.

Let's not even bother going into the body of text itself, which is basically an instructions directed towards marginalized people to "harden up" and stop standing up for themselves and focus on the juxtaposition of the headline and the image in the header:

0L4i76y.png

I suppose it is possible that the author has simply never watched that little TV show called "The News" as, otherwise, she'd know that a lot of grown-ups are already resulting to firearms to address attacks on their dignity and, thus, would have been confronted by the notion that, perhaps, trying to create a more empathetic society might not be such a bad thing after all.

 

Could you elaborate on this?  It sounds like you are responding to the image accompanying the article, which to me seems was placed there as a comment on how "duels" are fought in the modern sense.  She spends a good portion of the article making the point that previously remarks such as these would lead to outbursts of violence, and nowadays tend to spawn long protracted arguments about nothing.  From my reading it didn't seem she was advocating violence, just describing her views on how the expression of that violence has changed.  Namely that it is no longer desirable to be the aggressor, or the winner of the duel so to speak, but the one who is reacting to an aggressor.  Like some of the other articles posted in relation to this topic, the complaint seems to be that microagressions are treated like some kind of argumentative holy grail, and it's virtually impossible to make the distinction between what speech is aggressive vs. what is unintentional, therefore everything can fairly be labeled aggressive.  If I had to guess the thesis of the article seems to be that it's one thing to want to make the world more emphatic, but when the expression of that empathy leads to a stifling of a particular opinion, is empathy really being enhanced?

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Using a gun in the header for an article calling for people to suck up their hurt feelings instead of wallowing in "victim-hood" just seems bone-headed to me in an age where there are almost daily spree killings and suicides by people who don't feel they can express their pain in any other way, for fear of appearing weak (or undignified). 

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Stifling of particular opinions is a sign of maturity. It's hardly a sin to decide to maybe don't share certain opinions because you know they're just going to upset some folk.

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Like some of the other articles posted in relation to this topic, the complaint seems to be that microagressions are treated like some kind of argumentative holy grail, and it's virtually impossible to make the distinction between what speech is aggressive vs. what is unintentional, therefore everything can fairly be labeled aggressive.

Intentionality doesn't play into microaggresions that much, as I understand them. I mean, they're largely unintentional things that express the message "you are different/do not belong." Like if you're at lunch with people from the office and you turn to the Asian from a creative department to help split the check instead of the accountant, or if you ask a third generation Iranian-American who's never expressed an interest in mideast politics to explain the Syrian Civil War to you. Those aren't obvious acts of aggression, but it's not hard to see how the person on the receiving end of them would have any underlying feelings of alterity reinforced by the interaction.

I don't often see the term bandied about as a "hahaha, I win, sucker," kind of thing, and I don't personally know anyone who uses it that would view the kind of discussion where they talk about the idea of microaggressions as something to win or lose. I've never understood that part of the criticism of microaggression theory.

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That's the thing. People who complain about microaggressions being a thing like to act like people are blowing up at them "out of nowhere" when, in reality, the blow up is a result of that person doubling down on the shitty thing they said. Like, it would be cool if it could just go: 

Bob: *says problematic thing the first time*

Jim: "The thing you just said hurt my feelings"

Bob: "Oh, sorry" *it more thoughtful in future* 

 

And then it's done! End of story! Cool! Let's go ride bikes! 

 

Instead we have: 

 

Bob: *says problematic thing for the ten thousandth time*

Jim: "The thing you said hurt my feelings, as it has ten thousand times before" 

Bob: "No it didn't, and in fact you are the asshole" 

Jim: "Fuck you then" 

Bob: *Writes think piece about victim-hood culture* 

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I don't often see the term bandied about as a "hahaha, I win, sucker," kind of thing, and I don't personally know anyone who uses it that would view the kind of discussion where they talk about the idea of microaggressions as something to win or lose. I've never understood that part of the criticism of microaggression theory.

 

As I understand it the criticism isn't that microagressions don't exist, but that the response to them isn't proportional, and they are unfairly levied. Like the example in the article of the student being upset at a particular word being used, and then proceed to voice her grievance in the most visible place that would hear it.

 

The criticism I have of it personally is that it tends to justify aggressive responses based on the perception of another's aggression, which seems to be exacerbated by the conditions present on a college campus (or at least all the articles about it would seem to think so).  One person says something that is perceived as aggressive, or perhaps is aggressive, and this leads to a cycle where each person is responding as they would to an aggressor rather than treating the situation like what it is--a miscommunication.

 

Edit: It's worth pointing out my read on this comes from a book that had a profound effect on me I read in college, which has since spawned the school of Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy.  The first half of the book is an exhaustive breakdown of how and where communication fails, with one particular example being an argument between a husband and wife.  The argument begins with a particular communication being filtered through a perception, then a response being given to the perception, and then a response to the response based on a perception, etc.  I think the practical elements of how microaggressions are treated, either by the institutions or people themselves, are basically having this kind of an argument.

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As I understand it the criticism isn't that microagressions don't exist, but that the response to them isn't proportional, and they are unfairly levied. Like the example in the article of the student being upset at a particular word being used, and then proceed to voice her grievance in the most visible place that would hear it.

The criticism I have of it personally is that it tends to justify aggressive responses based on the perception of another's aggression, which seems to be exacerbated by the conditions present on a college campus (or at least all the articles about it would seem to think so). One person says something that is perceived as aggressive, or perhaps is aggressive, and this leads to a cycle where each person is responding as they would to an aggressor rather than treating the situation like what it is--a miscommunication.

I think it's justifiable to respond in what seems like a disproportionate way. I've put up with gay jokes and jew jokes all my life, and sometimes I've put up with them until, one day, I don't. My response seems ludicrous in the moment to some people because it seems to them like I'm responding to one thing, but I'm actually responding to a pattern that's been ongoing for a while.

I think it's fine for single to respond loudly to the use of a word that makes them uncomfortable. If one person says it and you pull them aside to say that it makes you feel uncomfortable and/or unwelcome, that doesn't stop other people in the group from using the same word that there was no obvious objection to in the group. But l didn't read that article because, well, I've read enough thinkpieces about how these damn kids are so sensitive to last a lifetime, so I can't comment on the specific instance it discusses, just the generalized version of it.

You're right that a lot of the problems with microaggressions are miscommunication, but I don't think the miscommunication is on the part of the people who are upset. I think it's on the people who have their questionable behavior pointed out. People just need to be more accepting of the fact that their going to fuck up and make someone feel excluded on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, etc., because we live in a society that trains us to do that.

I'm active in queer activism and have been for a while, and I still catch myself performing trans exclusionary microaggressions. I'm not transphobic, and I don't take those microaggressions being pointed out as an act of aggression or as them calling me out as transphobic. I take them for what they are -- someone reacting to something hurtful that I said, even if I didn't mean to be hurtful. They aren't attacking me, even if they're loud and hurt; they're responding to an attack that I didn't realize I was making.

Basically, the breakdown isn't on the part of the person who had been injured, but in the response. We need to teach people that being called out for a racist/sexist/homophobic/etc act is different and discrete from being accused of being a racist/sexist/homophobe/etc, and how to reasonably react to it.

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The Atlantic published a followup piece about the microaggression stuff

 

I don't disagree with some individual points in either article, but I think it is also doing the thing of conflating anecdote with data.  The hundreds of times a day that people manage to communicate about this stuff in perfectly reasonable manners don't get much press, but the very high profile, drama-ridden examples do. 

 

I'm also reminded of a few recent interactions the lady and I have had.  One, where in a business interaction, an older white man was being condescending and disrespectful.  I, politely, told him he was being condescending and it wasn't appropriate in this environment.  And he flipped his shit.  The lady was flying last weekend, and when she got back, she commented on how many older (white) businessmen she observed being shitty to airline employees, crossing over into straight abusive screaming a couple of times, once at a black, female security guard because a line wasn't moving fast enough.

 

I'll await with bated breath on the Atlantic's expose on how how the fragile ego and short temper of white American business men is destroying business culture.  Because even though I find some activist types to be annoying at time, I've never witnessed out of them the absolute super shit level of behavior I have out of white businessmen.

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The Atlanic has an article on microagressions and victimhood culture

 

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/09/the-rise-of-victimhood-culture/404794/

I don't really have an issue with what that article is describing, as a descriptive framework of social interactions. However, it makes a couple significant mis-steps:

 

- Calling is "victimization culture" is pretty charged language

- It seems to conflate the language of social justice with victimization culture, in a way that probably isn't really appropriate. You could use the same structure of interaction, appeal to 3rd parties, etc, to describe many kinds of interaction, and using the migro-aggression example, while convenient for illustration, implies that they're intertwined in a way that may or may not be true. The article calls this out at the end, but the damage, I think, has already been done.

- I think the description of social conditions is interesting. There are a lot of unspoken questions about why these emerged recently as opposed to historically (some ideas: higher levels of college enrollment vs. trades / apprenticeships / family businesses, weaker family bonds, etc.)

 

Some of the responses for that may be in the actual paper, which I haven't read yet.

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The Atlantic published a followup piece about the microaggression stuff

 

I don't disagree with some individual points in either article, but I think it is also doing the thing of conflating anecdote with data.  The hundreds of times a day that people manage to communicate about this stuff in perfectly reasonable manners don't get much press, but the very high profile, drama-ridden examples do. 

 

I think the article addresses that though.

 

There are lots of legitimate examples of minor but objectionable slights that impose a cumulative burden on those subject to them. Defenders of “microaggressions” do laudable work pointing some out, and I’d love to hear from emailers with stories of the framework being used successfully. What’s in dispute is whether the framework inevitably encourages excesses.

...

Those beliefs are premised not only on the many anecdotal examples of parodic complaints that appear on campuses where “microaggressions” as a framework prevail, but on the insight that if status accrues to people based on expressing grievance and demonstrating victimhood, the incentives to exaggerate both will be irresistible

 

As much as generalizing from anecdotes is a deplorably common trend in discussions of modern culture, I don't think the article was trying to say "This is happening everywhere, look at this example!" It seemed to be responding largely to the paper (inherently accepting the paper's premise that a culture of victimhood is on the rise), then simply using the Oberlin incident as something specific to walk through and discuss.

 

 

Some of the responses for that may be in the actual paper, which I haven't read yet.

 

The article's link to the paper in question is locked behind the standard academic wall that says "Random people who are interested in this but not part of the system must pay $30 to read the paper". For those interested, there's a public-facing version here. I've not read it yet, it looks to be about 8000 words.

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