That depends on whether the elections of Obama and Trump are the same thing. If not then you are just making false equivalencies.
This is incomprehensible. Where do you get all these thoughts to put in the heads of people who aren’t you?
I’m way left and whenever I see a white person with dreadlocks I wonder why they do it. That’s it. This whole “They’re not letting me think what I want to!” is weird to me. Why take the time to invent this shit?
It’s probably down to the human propensity to project (one’s own experience and/or thought processes, onto others).
Many on the right grew up being scolded for thought-crimes. Questioning religious orthodoxy, questioning why we have to hate those who don’t look like us, questioning why being gay is sinful, or even just questioning Daddy for anything at all that Daddy may do or say—every right-wing child learns very young that this will be punished. They learn to control their thoughts for fear of negative consequences.
So throughout their lives they assume that everyone–liberals included–are fearfully conforming to whatever policy positions their liberal peers demand. 'White guy in dreadlocks–I must denounce him for cultural appropriation or face terrible consequences!!1!!!’ …it makes perfect sense to the right-wing mind to assume that this sort of thing must always be going on inside the heads of progressives–because that’s what goes on inside their own heads.
It’s divorced from reality, of course.
Fair enough, I didn’t think you actually were advocating abstinence only education as effective, but giving more reasoning room to those who do. In some situations, it is effective, like the aforementioned S.A., where premarital sex will likely get you STD (stoned to death). With consequences like that, it may be a bit easier to resist natural impulses.
The problem with the verbal judo technique is that your debate opponent also needs to believe in logic and causality, and those also are things that the left is called “arrogant” for possessing.
I have a sister who will swear up and down that we’ve never been to the moon, and anyone who thinks differently is either just plain stupid, or they are a liar. (Not a fan of evolution or global warming either, but at least those require some level of extrapolation to understand.) No form of logic or reason will get through to her on topics upon which she has made up her mind. She just gets angry if you trap her in a logical contradiction. I think that there are probably many of those people not just on the right, and we have many stubborn ignoramuses on “our” side too, but the conservative side of politics does, on average, demand much less intellectual rigor in order to grasp.
So, here’s a thought. Start practicing with the people on our side. We’ve got left leaning anti-vaxxer’s, we’ve got left leaning moon hoaxers, 911 thruthers are mostly left leaning. We should start with them, try to convince them of the error of their ways. As we are nominally politically aligned, there is at least one less hurdle in trying to get through to them.
Once we’ve managed to convince those on our side to stop being stupid, we will have the tools to go after the conservatives on their own terms as well.
http://thetab.com/2016/04/05/isnt-ok-white-people-dreadlocks-83996
http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/31/living/white-dreadlocks-cultural-appropriation-feat/
And even here:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=788735
The people directly complaining about ‘white guy dreadlocks’ may be only a minority, but the idea of ‘cultural appropriation’ as a bad thing including the idea that you’re a racist if you believe that anyone of any race should be able to wear any headwear or hairstyle they want is not something I came up with and is something I hear often from left-leaning people. When you take the label of ‘racist’ to that point, you dilute the condemnation value of the term to where it becomes meaningless.
Then another word takes its place. Semantic changes, whether one regards them as deterioration or not, is little more than a minor cultural shift. Call “racism” by “Fred”, it doesn’t alter the fact of racism.
I remain hopeful that convincing our fellows that racism is bad will depend more on the truth of the thing than what color of shoes it is wearing. Copasetic, hepcat?
It’s a politically powerless and almost entirely meaningless minority. The Tumblr section. You might as well start complaining about “xe” next. The right-wing equivalent of this would be me pointing to… I dunno, I would have said stormfront, but that doesn’t seem apt any more given the most recent election. :rolleyes:
Yeah, this is key. There’s a debate on the left about whether cultural appropriation is a thing, and if so, what constitutes it. Debate is fine and healthy. I tend to think that it’s a thing, that sometimes it’s a good thing, and that some people on the left are way too quick to condemn a basic dynamic of human culture, but that also it’s sometimes a bad thing, and sometimes it’s just a thing to be aware of.
Calling it a “mantra” implies that leftists in general must adhere to one understanding of cultural appropriation. That’s nonsense.
As a follow-up, I’ve encountered this sort of attitude in real life twice, both times from professors. I was a student in both contexts; I argued politely but strenuously with both; I suffered no repercussions whatsoever for my disagreement, indeed felt that my disagreement was welcomed.
It’s a perfectly valid tactic. The Left assumes that black people are less capable than the average of getting an ID. You say so yourself. If it’s racist to say that black people are, on average, less capable than the ordinary citizen, then it is racist to say that black people are, on average, less capable of obtaining ID than the ordinary citizen. If it isn’t, then nobody on the Left or Right is racist for saying it.
Regards,
Shodan
That’s silly. The word “capable” without context means one thing (any of several things, really), while “capable of…(something specific)” can imply “given the realities of the context, which might constrain certain people from fulfilling their inherent ‘capability’…and this group of people is disproportionately of certain races(s), for reasons that could be explained pretty well (though with some debate).”
To give an extreme example of the semantic difference, I generally consider myself to be a pretty “capable” person, but I’m not “capable of flapping my arms and flying.”
“Cultural appropriation” and the accusations of racism that go with it is something that I’ve seen outside of Tumblr (I don’t actually go on Tumblr for anything written) and that doesn’t appear to be limited to tiny groups in my experience. And while I’ve seen plenty of right-wingers who will condemn Stormfront and the like, the saner parts of the left don’t condemn ‘cultural appropriation’ racsim accusations by saying something like ‘no that’s just stupid, stop comparing a hairstyle to wearing blackface’, they either smile and nod or treat it as a legitimate point of view open for debate.
And you can say they’re unimportant all you want, but wide-ranging and absurd accusations of racism really do make people shrug at real accusations. It’s pretty easy for someone to say ‘Well, they say Trump’s racist, but they said that kid with the hair was racist for that dumb hair, and I think Trump’s just saying stuff to get elected, so whatever’.
No one is talking about anything without context.
The context is what the average or even sub-average person can do. Why is obtaining some kind of ID an unreasonable obstacle to vote, but not to buy beer or apply for food stamps?
Regards,
Shodan
The cite is about that hotbed of liberal socialism, North Carolina. I derive this implication from “How do you apply for food stamps in North Carolina?”. Yeah, I’m a sleuth.
Further, the word “may” as it so frequently appears, for instance,
Which is to say, there is quite a wide variety of things which may be accepted. But only some of them are the kinds of id required to buy beer. So, your point is null, void and empty.
Don’t hesitate to ask when you are uncertain, we are here to help!
It isn’t that we think minorities are less capable of obtaining an ID, it’s that statistically speaking, there are more obstacles for them to overcome in so doing. Not owning a car is one metric we can all understand, of course poor urban people are less likely to own a car and thus will not have a driver’s license. Without a car, it’s harder to get to the government office to get the ID, particularly when said office is only open when you work. Moreover, getting some of the information like birth certificates is harder when you don’t have a car or internet access and you were born out of the state in which you currently reside, or even if you do and you have to make your way to the state vital records office and of course if you don’t live in the county of your birth or near your state capital it’s that much harder. These are all known and pretty much indisputable.
Regarding the silly remark about having to get an ID to get food stamps, it’s awful tough for some to get that ID for that purpose as well. That doesn’t make it right to impose an extra burden on minority voters, particularly when it is to solve a problem that simply does not exist.
Anyway, it doesn’t mean Fred to a tree.
Debates will continue in small (mostly academic) circles about “appropriation.” I’d be tempted to simply call the Fashion Police on white guys with dreads–but they haven’t been worth shit since Joan died.
When the Klan and White Nationalists rally around your guy, you just might have a problem with racism.
ETA: Now I’m wondering what Joan Rivers would have had to say about President Trump.
Because they demonstrably are - not because of their race, but because of racism.
Quick reminder - are you one of those “race realists”? Because this is exactly the kind of disgusting equivocation they might make. :smack:
So nutpicking is a reasonable way to form opinions about the entire group? Should we use the preppers or the Bundy clan to represent all of conservative thought? Should we use them to shoehorn gun rights advocates? This is stupid. And yes, I realize full well that there are a fuckton of really stupid people in this country (at least 61 million), but that doesn’t make it okay here.
Following a link in your cite, I read this:
For some pro-lifers, that’s a win.
Or we just try to slowly move to the other side of the room without making any sudden motions, and leave those complaining to make their point alone. Not worth the heartburn.