RACE TO THE PAST: "What difference does it make?"

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 2018

Part 5—Let's return to this topic:
Incomparably, we were called away from our desk this morning, interrupting our work on this topic.

That said, this topic is very important. It involves the destructive old skin game called "race."

We think it's a great advance that people who are defined as "white" have been able, in the past fifty year, to slip the chains of their "origins."

Ethnicity came to be optional. Nobody hugely cares any more. That isn't yet true about "race."

We all still get defined by "race," a taxonomy which comes to us live and direct from what Professor Genovese called "the world the slaveholders made." Plainly, race isn't hugely optional yet, but that's a type of additional liberation which should be the goal.

This brings us back to the wonderful question Professor Gates asked last year. He was speaking with Ava DuVernay about her genetic "origins," some of which led back to Europe, some of which led to people who lived "under African skies."

DuVernay displayed a rooting interest in how the balance of her "origins" would turn out. "What difference does it make?" the professor deftly asked.

What did Professor Gates mean by that? As the year proceeds, we'll offer our suppositions.

Meanwhile, we've liked Christine Emba's work at the Washington Post. We think her instincts were slightly unhelpful on this particular matter, and yes, she's stuck with her youthiness, though that will transplendently fade.

That said, we like the cut of Emba's jib. She deserves to be freed from the chains which are under discussion, as does everyone else in your town and on your block. The concepts have come to us live and direct from people with gruesome ideas.

It's good that Marty slipped some of these chains. It wouldn't be smart to go back.

18 comments:

  1. "the world the slaveholders made"

    ...and the liberals maintain, by peddling identity politics, and by endless race-mongering.

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    1. Shouldn't you be spending your time comforting co-workers under indictment today, "Mao" ?

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    2. "Defendant ORGANIZATION had a strategic goal to sow discord in the US political system....." from paragraph 6 in the Mueller indictments today.

      Remind you of anybody we know, whose first initials begin MAO?

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    3. Beautiful. I love it when my pet zombies get excited and start dancing around.

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    4. You mean the zombies in neighboring cubicles in St. Petersburg ?

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  2. interrupting our work on this topic.

    interrupting our "work" on this topic.

    FIFY.

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  3. Want to know more about “race”?

    http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2018/02/genizaros

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    1. Excellent link to what is largely unknown history. I certainly didn't. And thanks for reminding me of that site, haven't visited in years.

      On another tack, here’s a couple of links link to a couple of great songs. Known them forever, but never knew who they were until their fairly recent resurgence in popularity. Now, someone is going to think I’m racist for saying this, but I’d always believed that the singers were ethnic from the timbre of their voices. Well, I was right regarding the first, but boy was I surprised to see how I was right.

      And of course, I was wrong about the second.

      I remember going to a college class headed by a Doctor Grossman, and was quite surprised that the professor was *gasp* a woman! I was young then, but it was a good life-lesson. Anyhoo…

      LINK


      LINK

      Human voices, from a beautiful human ocean. May we survive.

      Leroy

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  4. Only one race...the human race.

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  5. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  6. The chains that Marty slipped were those of caring about the opinions of the people around him, his buddies and his family. Learning to attach less importance to what other people think has nothing to do with race or ethnicity. It has to do with growing up, becoming an adult.

    It is always annoying when Somerby distorts the meaning of some movie to serve his own goals. Chayevsky was not arguing that people should care less about ethnicity when he wrote Marty.

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  7. "Darwin saw sexual selection, in which basically trivial preferences shaped the appearances of populations over time, as a means by which races with a common origin could have acquired their visible differences.

    Darwin thus emphasised human unity and dwelt upon superficial differences, while acquiescing in the contemporary assumption that some races were superior to others. At the time that Josiah Wedgwood's "A Man and a Brother" cameos were being fired in his kilns, three great principles were firing up on the other side of the Channel. Each was subsequently at stake in the interlinked questions of slavery and race. Liberty was the simplest. Darwin held to the conviction he grew up with, that human beings must not be bought, sold or owned. Fraternity was the principle that, in Desmond and Moore's reading, he worked to establish by building a theory of common descent. But equality was a different matter. Equality so often is."

    http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/did-charles-darwin-believe-in-racial-inequality-1519874.html

    " On the other side, those who argue that some peoples are cleverer than others insist that theirs are scientific claims, to be judged by their content rather than their context, according to facts rather than values."

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    As long as there are observable differences between people, there will be attempts to correlate those differences with indicators that have social significance. In our society, race correlates with poverty, lack of education, increased crime, and decreased motivation to attain mainstream social goals. There are historical reasons why this is so, but as long as the obvious physiological differences correlate with these social differences, race will remain important to people, because people are social beings and they care about the things that correlate with physical race.

    You can eliminate ethnicity because (1) it is not generally physically obvious, and (2) it is no longer correlated with social differences such as poverty, education, or occupational status.

    Genuine equality among people must occur before concern about race will disappear. That is happening but progress is very slow. It is partly slow because the people involved do not consider erasing such differences to be a worthwhile goal.

    Somerby is correct to consider that cherishing differences, respecting diversity and valuing all people is fundamentally different than seeking to recognize the unity, similarity, sameness of all people, their shared humanity despite difference. That old liberal value became outmoded in the 60s and now marks one as a bigot. Meanwhile, alt-Right and White Supremacists want neither equality, nor unity, nor an erasing of differences. They want the superiority of their own "race" to be acknowledged by all, so that social privilege can be enshrined by birth and not effort or money or other achievement.

    Yearning for unity, shared humanity, oneness of all people marks Somerby as someone who is oblivious to the needs, striving, beliefs of others, especially those who are themselves marked by physical indicators of differentness. Somerby needs to learn some empathy.

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    1. “There are historical reasons why this is so, but as long as the obvious physiological differences correlate with these social differences, race will remain important to people, because people are social beings and they care about the things that correlate with physical race.”

      Tipped your hand there, you tool. Go away. No empathy here.

      Leroy

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    2. Go look up the word correlate.

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    3. Look up the word race. Fool.

      Leroy

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    4. No progress on race is possible if people cannot discuss it without calling names.

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  8. A GOOD AND BAD DAY FOR BOB.

    Charges illustrate Rachel has been, more or less,
    correct all along.

    Good News: Matthews was horrible tonight, even for him.
    I think he may be on the way out.

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