DEI proponents claim reasonably that Okun’s characteristics of ‘supremacy’ are somehow exclusive to white people. It is right there in the titles of her works. It seems obvious to me that these are characteristics of people in power of any race or in any culture and need to be addressed on that basis and not on the basis of who is white. Black people are just as capable of racism, even sometimes towards their own, as any other race, though they have a lot less overt opportunity to deploy it in white-dominated society. Okun does say, though I think questionably, in the podcast and in her 2021 paper that lower classes of white people don’t seem to admit to having those characteristics or to show them, and claim that they don’t apply until they achieve higher status, which, if true, in itself indicates that the paradigm is hierarchical rather than racial. It is just most easily identified in racial terms and is a misconstruction, a red herring. Claims of racism based on these characteristics are thus self-reinforcing and so themselves engender racism. This highlights the point of intersectionality of all categories of the oppressed which is that of the powerful gaming ways of generating hierarchical structures, a product of long cultural evolution, the ingrained consequences of which Okun is struggling, I think in good faith, to find the very necessary means to contend with.
It may be that the problem with the light-skinned races is that they have created and/or wielded the most powerful tools, e.g., guns, germs(!?!), and steel, with which to create oppression while at the same time pretending (though still presumably aspiring) to inhabit the moral high ground. Everybody interested in power wants to join that club.
I have no interest in liberal white race hucksters. The people who mop the floors at Harvard or the offices of the Intercept put up with micro-aggressions all day. It's part of being a servant. Who makes money preaching to liberals about that?
Here's John McWhorter defending race science and free speech for academics but not the public.
So you defend academic freedom and race science, and censorship of the plebs, but left wing criticisms of BLM mean nothing. And I guess you're a big defender of Israel, because Jewish identity politics is different. Read my other comments and maybe you'll learn something.
"Black Lives Matter sentiment is essentially a militant expression of racial liberalism. Such expressions are not a threat but rather a bulwark to the neoliberal project that has obliterated the social wage, gutted public sector employment and worker pensions, undermined collective bargaining and union power, and rolled out an expansive carceral apparatus, all developments that have adversely affected black workers and communities. Sure, some activists are calling for defunding police departments and de-carceration, but as a popular slogan, Black Lives Matter is a cry for full recognition within the established terms of liberal democratic capitalism. And the ruling class agrees."
But most fans and critics of BLM and the moral indignation of the liberal middle class have one thing in common. The existence of Zionists against identity politics is almost funny. The racism is obvious. But the editorial committee that signed off on the hyped/flawed 1619 Project meets under an autographed photograph of Theodor Herzl.
From Hertz's letter to Cecil Rhodes, reprinted in his diaries.
"You are being invited to help make history. That cannot frighten you, nor will you laugh at it. It is not in your accustomed line; it doesn't involve Africa, but a piece of Asia Minor, not Englishmen, but Jews.
But had this been on your path, you would have done it yourself by now.
How, then, do I happen to turn to you, since this is an out-of-the-way matter for you? How indeed? Because it is something colonial, and because it presupposes understanding of a development which will take twenty or thirty years. There are visionaries who look past greater spaces of time, but they lack a practical sense. Then again there are practical people, like the trust magnates in America, but they lack political imagination. But you, Mr. Rhodes, are a visionary politician or a practical visionary. You have already demonstrated this."
A few year ago the Times refused to print a letter reminding them of that.
"As a dude who came up banging Malcolm's "Ballot or The Bullet" like it was the Wu-Tang Forever, who recited Garvey's "Look For Me In The Whirlwind" at the school assembly, Israel is like a parallel universe, what Liberia could have been with the alteration of a few key historical variables."
They don't teach Liberian history in this country,
Another America: The Story of Liberia and the Former Slaves Who Ruled It
---The UNIA envoy soon uncovered something even more insidious at work. “While in Monrovia, I went to a dry goods and bought several yards of khaki to have two pairs of trousers made,” Garcia reported to Garvey. “As I was stepping out of the store, my companion (an Americo-Liberian) told [me]: ‘Why, I don’t suppose you are going to carry this bundle yourself?’ ‘Why not?’ said I; ‘it is a very small parcel.’ He answered that it was not the custom in Liberia for any gentleman to carry parcels; therefore the usefulness of having slaves.” Visitors to Liberia, particularly white ones, had long accused the Americoes of mistreating the natives, but a similar assessment from Garcia would likely spark a controversy.---
Liberia was founded in 1822. African Liberians didn't get the right to vote until the late 1950s, weren't granted full equality, on paper, until 1964, or any real power until the coup in 1980
"But for many others, ‘The Ransom’ is a bitter reminder of the singular power of the New York Times – a power it has not often deployed in the interest of Haitians, let alone their history. ‘When they say something, it is accepted – even though others have been saying it for decades,’ in the words of Cécile Accilien, the vice-president of the Haitian Studies Association. She told me ‘The Ransom’ had made her so angry she hadn’t been able read it all."
The population of the most powerful country on earth lives in a bubble. Congratulations on dumping Omidyar.
"I am a Jew. I am a religious Jew. I am an anti-Zionist Jew. I realize that to make this last claim is to risk that you will stop reading, as often any claim of anti-Zionism brings with it a label of traitor, anti-Semite, self-hating Jew. I hope, however, that you will give me the benefit of the doubt, at least for the few minutes that it will take you to read what I have to say."
There's no mention of Israel or Zionism on her new page
I only talk about Israel because most critics of identity politics are Zionists. I don't expect much from people but the hypocrisy in this case is racial.
BLM buppies are annoying, but that's how change works. Two powerful black women, Misha Green and C. Nicole Mason were forced out of positions apparently for treating subordinates like shit. I'm betting they were taking a little revenge. That made me laugh. Better that than white whine and earnest self-loathing.
The brown bourgeoisie is growing. Adolph Reed's arguments are predicated on the assumption that black people should be leftists. That in itself is a form of racial exceptionalism.
But between white defenders of looting and a pro gun buppie from a family of cops, I'm with the buppie. Killer Mike:
And someone should tell Okun that most Jews look like Arabs. My father could never pass. And every anti-Semitic caricature looks like Arafat. The cops who killed Tyre Nichols were black. And the IDF puts Mizrahi soldiers in the front line on the west bank. Yes it's racism.
DEI proponents claim reasonably that Okun’s characteristics of ‘supremacy’ are somehow exclusive to white people. It is right there in the titles of her works. It seems obvious to me that these are characteristics of people in power of any race or in any culture and need to be addressed on that basis and not on the basis of who is white. Black people are just as capable of racism, even sometimes towards their own, as any other race, though they have a lot less overt opportunity to deploy it in white-dominated society. Okun does say, though I think questionably, in the podcast and in her 2021 paper that lower classes of white people don’t seem to admit to having those characteristics or to show them, and claim that they don’t apply until they achieve higher status, which, if true, in itself indicates that the paradigm is hierarchical rather than racial. It is just most easily identified in racial terms and is a misconstruction, a red herring. Claims of racism based on these characteristics are thus self-reinforcing and so themselves engender racism. This highlights the point of intersectionality of all categories of the oppressed which is that of the powerful gaming ways of generating hierarchical structures, a product of long cultural evolution, the ingrained consequences of which Okun is struggling, I think in good faith, to find the very necessary means to contend with.
It may be that the problem with the light-skinned races is that they have created and/or wielded the most powerful tools, e.g., guns, germs(!?!), and steel, with which to create oppression while at the same time pretending (though still presumably aspiring) to inhabit the moral high ground. Everybody interested in power wants to join that club.
Your analysis is much appreciated. Thank you.
It’s an important issue. I’m reading Woke Racism by John McWorter. I recommend it.
I have no interest in liberal white race hucksters. The people who mop the floors at Harvard or the offices of the Intercept put up with micro-aggressions all day. It's part of being a servant. Who makes money preaching to liberals about that?
Here's John McWhorter defending race science and free speech for academics but not the public.
Try again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRsKS7spUkQ
Please read Woke Racism. Then let’s talk.
Are you a bot?
Not that I know of 😳
So you defend academic freedom and race science, and censorship of the plebs, but left wing criticisms of BLM mean nothing. And I guess you're a big defender of Israel, because Jewish identity politics is different. Read my other comments and maybe you'll learn something.
Training doesn't seem to work, but the pay is good.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/17/opinion/dei-trainings-effective.html
More than anything it's a parallel to the earnest defense of looting
https://www.amazon.com/Defense-Looting-Riotous-History-Uncivil/dp/1645036693
One form of condescension or another.
Adolph Reed and his crew can be annoying but some things are obvious
https://nonsite.org/the-triumph-of-black-lives-matter-and-neoliberal-redemption/
"Black Lives Matter sentiment is essentially a militant expression of racial liberalism. Such expressions are not a threat but rather a bulwark to the neoliberal project that has obliterated the social wage, gutted public sector employment and worker pensions, undermined collective bargaining and union power, and rolled out an expansive carceral apparatus, all developments that have adversely affected black workers and communities. Sure, some activists are calling for defunding police departments and de-carceration, but as a popular slogan, Black Lives Matter is a cry for full recognition within the established terms of liberal democratic capitalism. And the ruling class agrees."
But most fans and critics of BLM and the moral indignation of the liberal middle class have one thing in common. The existence of Zionists against identity politics is almost funny. The racism is obvious. But the editorial committee that signed off on the hyped/flawed 1619 Project meets under an autographed photograph of Theodor Herzl.
https://twitter.com/elivalley/status/1219097428277723136
From Hertz's letter to Cecil Rhodes, reprinted in his diaries.
"You are being invited to help make history. That cannot frighten you, nor will you laugh at it. It is not in your accustomed line; it doesn't involve Africa, but a piece of Asia Minor, not Englishmen, but Jews.
But had this been on your path, you would have done it yourself by now.
How, then, do I happen to turn to you, since this is an out-of-the-way matter for you? How indeed? Because it is something colonial, and because it presupposes understanding of a development which will take twenty or thirty years. There are visionaries who look past greater spaces of time, but they lack a practical sense. Then again there are practical people, like the trust magnates in America, but they lack political imagination. But you, Mr. Rhodes, are a visionary politician or a practical visionary. You have already demonstrated this."
A few year ago the Times refused to print a letter reminding them of that.
https://mondoweiss.net/2010/09/actually-herzl-was-a-colonialist/
A couple of years before that, white liberalism's favorite angry black black man wrote "The Negro Sings Of Zionism"
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2008/05/the-negro-sings-of-zionism/5201/
"As a dude who came up banging Malcolm's "Ballot or The Bullet" like it was the Wu-Tang Forever, who recited Garvey's "Look For Me In The Whirlwind" at the school assembly, Israel is like a parallel universe, what Liberia could have been with the alteration of a few key historical variables."
They don't teach Liberian history in this country,
Another America: The Story of Liberia and the Former Slaves Who Ruled It
---The UNIA envoy soon uncovered something even more insidious at work. “While in Monrovia, I went to a dry goods and bought several yards of khaki to have two pairs of trousers made,” Garcia reported to Garvey. “As I was stepping out of the store, my companion (an Americo-Liberian) told [me]: ‘Why, I don’t suppose you are going to carry this bundle yourself?’ ‘Why not?’ said I; ‘it is a very small parcel.’ He answered that it was not the custom in Liberia for any gentleman to carry parcels; therefore the usefulness of having slaves.” Visitors to Liberia, particularly white ones, had long accused the Americoes of mistreating the natives, but a similar assessment from Garcia would likely spark a controversy.---
Liberia was founded in 1822. African Liberians didn't get the right to vote until the late 1950s, weren't granted full equality, on paper, until 1964, or any real power until the coup in 1980
Haiti gets the 1619 treatment.
https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2022/may/hello-columbus
"But for many others, ‘The Ransom’ is a bitter reminder of the singular power of the New York Times – a power it has not often deployed in the interest of Haitians, let alone their history. ‘When they say something, it is accepted – even though others have been saying it for decades,’ in the words of Cécile Accilien, the vice-president of the Haitian Studies Association. She told me ‘The Ransom’ had made her so angry she hadn’t been able read it all."
The population of the most powerful country on earth lives in a bubble. Congratulations on dumping Omidyar.
Okun in 2009. Now it's only available because another site reproduced it. https://mondoweiss.net/2009/07/tema-okun/
"I am a Jew. I am a religious Jew. I am an anti-Zionist Jew. I realize that to make this last claim is to risk that you will stop reading, as often any claim of anti-Zionism brings with it a label of traitor, anti-Semite, self-hating Jew. I hope, however, that you will give me the benefit of the doubt, at least for the few minutes that it will take you to read what I have to say."
There's no mention of Israel or Zionism on her new page
I only talk about Israel because most critics of identity politics are Zionists. I don't expect much from people but the hypocrisy in this case is racial.
BLM buppies are annoying, but that's how change works. Two powerful black women, Misha Green and C. Nicole Mason were forced out of positions apparently for treating subordinates like shit. I'm betting they were taking a little revenge. That made me laugh. Better that than white whine and earnest self-loathing.
The brown bourgeoisie is growing. Adolph Reed's arguments are predicated on the assumption that black people should be leftists. That in itself is a form of racial exceptionalism.
But between white defenders of looting and a pro gun buppie from a family of cops, I'm with the buppie. Killer Mike:
https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/30/us/killer-mike-atlanta-protest-rapper-trnd/index.html
And someone should tell Okun that most Jews look like Arabs. My father could never pass. And every anti-Semitic caricature looks like Arafat. The cops who killed Tyre Nichols were black. And the IDF puts Mizrahi soldiers in the front line on the west bank. Yes it's racism.
I look forward to the transcript. Being severely hearing impaired, I cannot listen to podcasts. Thank you for providing the service.