Young Lord Stancil here is a reliable instrument for unwittingly illustrating the internal contradictions of contemporary social justice politics. In theory, the concept of privilege checking is inherently introspective - it’s a way for the individual to ask him- or herself whether his or her perspective is impacted by privilege in such a way as to cloud judgment or create prejudice. That probably sounds unobjectionable, and (again in theory) it more or less is. The concept of “privilege” is typically abstracted so much as to be useless, but looking at your own perspective and what influences it is a useful exercise.
"This is of course much greater than Stancil and greater even than privilege checking: modern identity politics contains a vast set of discursive tools that are meant to prompt self-critique but which are used, in practice, for the valorization of the individuals who most aggressively and shamelessly beat the drum."
The point of modern "privilege" discourse is to provide the in-group a ready-made stick with which to beat people they don't like, a sin that out-group members didn't choose, did nothing to deserve, and and can never change, regardless how piteously they beat their breasts and confess endlessly their crime of being born a member of the wrong caste.
At least the Dharmic religions have reincarnation to look forward to.
Totally unrelated, but this reminded me of some writing I saw on a bathroom wall during medical school. Someone had written, "List of things you can't YOLO", leaving space below for people to write responses. The first answer was "Hinduism".
the chemistry building at my undergrad school and a rather pristine men's room stall, with a single bit of graffiti scrawled into the door, that read: "Heisenberg may have sat here"
OK, that has nothing to do with your comment, but still reminded me.
Our P Chem prof was named Dr. Sly. One of our final exam questions had to do with the probability of coffee molecules passing through the side wall of the ceramic mug. Top 3 of hardest courses I had to take. Hardest was Systems. After that Linear Algebra, where I at least learned the word axiomatic
If you select an excerpt from the article, a little black tooltip box should generate with the option to share or restack the quote. Restacking is sort of like retweeting - except it's just a snippet of the original article.
Real question for progressives/leftists: Have you ever actually legitimately "checked your privilege" at some point? If so, what did it consist of/look like? What did this privilege-checking consist of at a mechanistic level?
Like, I have worried about whether I am a good person, in the way that one does. I find that's both sufficient and insufficient, in a way that is true for all of us.
Yes. I've had many moments like that, including ones that have caused me to reach out to people and retract/apologize for some positions or ideas I took in the past. Normal stuff.
But I kind of get the idea that the "checking" in this context has to be both more performative and more anguished than that. And that you have to be public about it, very public.
I think any decent person should consider the extent to which their perspective on any matter is shaped by their life experience. For example, is my assessment of parole and risk impacted by the fact that I haven't lost an immediate family member to homicide? Are my expectations from my classroom too high because I didn't spend formative years of my education dysfunctionally studying on Zoom because of a global pandemic? Are my tastes in style and fashion impacted by what I can afford and others cannot (or things I cannot afford and others can)? But I think that the minute the exercise is performed to an audience, it loses 100% of its value.
I cannot stand the American habit of assigning authority based on proximity to experience or tragedy.
So you got mugged. Who cares? Does that mean you're now qualified to discuss criminal justice policy with a PhD? I can tell you right now that this belief is not universal and that people in other countries shake their heads when they come across this.
If you're a cancer survivor frankly I don't care what you think about survival. The person I want to talk to is your doctor.
I have a more nuanced perspective on this. I do see that crime can have personal implications that matter, for example, for how victims should be treated in a courtroom. I can also see how important policies pertaining to bedside manner and informed consent should take patients' experiences and perspectives into account. And I can see how someone who has just been released after a long prison sentence would know firsthand what his or her initial struggles and acute needs are and could provide guidance on how to offer him or her immediate assistance in their first steps in outside society. At the same time, I think the idea that the person closest to the traumatizing experience should be the world curator of all policy about it, to the exclusion of expertise, and sometimes when in a state that makes it difficult to generalize, is a very big problem in my field.
I think a large part of the underlying problem is this country's traditional distrust of authority/expertise.
Individual experience is fine but how is it utilized? We don't give carte blanche to rape victims to design prisons or set judicial penalties for rape (or ay least we shouldn't). Rather we let experts survey the individual experiences of victims and then change policy based on thar. The insanity of presenting victims as "experts" based merely on their victim status is a uniquely American fallacy.
Not design prisons, no. But inform policy decisions what should and should not be allowed on cross examination of rape victims? Not as ultimate arbiters and moral curators, but as valuable contributors to the conversation? Sure, I'm very interested in their perspective on that.
"what should and should not be allowed on cross examination of rape victims?"
Absolutely not. Rules on cross examination are devised with the goal of holding fair trials and determining guilt or innocence. Anything that upsets that balance works counter to that purpose. It's one step down a slippery slope.
Right. To me, it’s mostly about self awareness. I have sometimes withheld comment on a young person’s college education decision because attending college now is a vastly different enterprise than when I went through it. That kind of inner questioning is as much “checking my privilege” as I can tolerate.
You don't backtalk to your doctor or your plumber (within reason). Simply acknowledging that somebody else knows more than you do about a specific topic is just normal human existence.
For that reason I would absolutely defer to an 18 year old on the college admissions process (or even whether college is justified in the first place). I haven't paid close attention to the subject in decades.
The part where this completely normal human behavior goes off the rails is when--surprise, surprise--race is dragged into the picture.
Yes, endlessly, and it did nothing except give me a massive psychic complex.
I had a middle-class childhood, born to two parents who were born into very working-class backgrounds. I went to a fee-paying school, but which was only affordable for my parents because my dad was a teacher there which took about 75% off the fees. My friends at school were wealthy, far wealthier than us. It left me with a deeply confused sense of self.
I still have massive hangups about my own identity – are my politics simply a kind of act of guilt I feel on some level about the ease of my own childhood (‘I’m not like the others!’), or the predictable ‘champagne socialism’ of someone who never really had to struggle? Am I just a vector of predictable traits?
Yes...but mostly in nontraditional ways? So, I'm a lawyer sitting in my cushy office, advising the federal government, so I fairly frequently say 'this seems like the safest legal answer to me, rangers/biologists/archaeologists/whatever, is that actually workable for you, as you have yo do it, not just talk about it?'
Technically, they have orange tabby privilege. But "un-technically", they don't care about all this bullshit (cats don't do "cishet"); they just shit in your planter and eventually lick their ass for clean up.
Dogs, on the other hand, are fully on board with the proggies:
I've try to do this regularly, and find hearing about others doing so helpful in that it's hard to know what to do with a broad and amorphous concept like "check your privilege" without examples.
Though, I don't usually think of my examples as that, because the phrase we know is "check your privilege" - as in, exactly what Freddie describes, a thing you say to someone else, usually as a way to tell them they're wrong about something. Honestly, an act of aggression, even if motivated by justice.
Anyway, I find it most useful to do when I find myself having unusual feelings about other people, either positive or negative. Two examples I can give, both from my adventures in public transit in Washington DC:
1 - going into the Metro, and a black teen in a white tank top runs past, and hops the turnstile. I reflected on how I might feel differently if the guy I'd seen was a white man in a suit and tie. I wasn't especially negative about the teen, but realized that I would absolutely assume that the white guy had somewhere important to be, and thus skipped paying for that reason. I didn't make that assumption about the teen, though obviously race and dress have little to do with how important one's engagements are.
2- on the train, saw a mother engaging in a very sweet way with her young child, reading to them and patiently helping with the hard parts. I realized that this is not uncommon behavior, I only noticed it because it was a black woman and child - most of my friends have not had kids themselves, so most of the parent/child interactions I see are my white friends, who are generally middle class and good parents. But none of my black friends have children yet, so my primary biases about black parents come from seeing them in brief interactions on public transit - brief, stressful, and they only stick out when they seem like bad parents. I realized I had internalized a sense that black women were worse parents, such that this good one I happened to encounter stuck out to me.
Both these reflections helped me, in terms of identifying biases I didn't realize I had, so now I think about those populations differently - I try to reflect on how I might feel differently in a given situation if they were a different race, or class, or disability status, and how I can extend the benefit of the doubt to them in ways that are as automatic as i do with white people or middle class people.
And, like others have said - mostly useful as an individual, private exercise, or as here as an illustrative example.
(I also have about one million of these from my work as an HR person who has reviewed thousands of resumes over the years)
Yes. I have always assumed that most people do it while they read about the experiences of people who are not like them. It's all about "Tell me what it's like not to be me."
I think that curious readers have always "checked their privilege." It's not something invented in 2014.
Every time I check it, I find myself a little short. Which is not the obvious intent.
I wonder sometimes though, what was the original intent, the first time it was said in a conversation. Is it (1) examine your privilege and compare it to mine (the default setting now), or (2) leave it at the door (like your overcoat when you walk into an art museum)?
You've laid out really well something I've felt for a long time, which is an annoyance with white people who shit on White People. It's always weird to me. Even if they ARE a very good ally or whatever - surely they weren't always one; they themselves were more than likely once those very White People they decry. Because of this, it feels to me like they're obligated to have a little empathy towards their own - or at least not pretend like they don't know where their fellow white folks are coming from.
And that's important, IMO, because they as fellow white people to those they look down on are the ones with the power to actually, potentially, change those people's minds. Because bigoted white people are way more likely to listen to other white people than they are to nonwhite folks. And so if they want to be true allies, a good role for them to take on would be to educate their fellow white folks. And to do that effectively, you have to come from a place of empathy; otherwise, why should the other person listen to you in the first place?
I don't know if I'm making any sense, and I'm sure there's plenty to disagree with in what I'm saying, but. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Also, I'm probably tangenting off a bit from your actual post, but hopefully some relevance comes across.
I don't disagree with any of this. I boggle at the progress we've achieved by seducing the world with our decadent liberal values; how is becoming hard-hearted and bitter the next logical step?
It's not just white people. Lots of minorities who claim to represent their communities also harbour a lot of disdain for their own. It's all a race to be among the chosen few in a new elite class that transcends race, religion, geography, sexual orientation (but of course, not class, because this is about the new elite, after all). So whether you're white or black or Asian or Latino, if you're trying to be in this new class, you're disgusted and irritated by the "backwards" people in your own group that are seemingly holding you back. However, you still have to pretend you identify with them because of the identitarian points they give you, which is the only way you feel relevant.
It's strange because in any other context, publicly fixating on how wealthy or able bodied or fill-in-the-blank-privileged you are would be considered bragging.
Like, if someone kept telling me in conversation how they grew up wealthy and how that gives them a leg up over me, I would not then think they are self-aware. I would think the opposite.
I just got a new gaming rig with a 4090 for the video card. I'm going to start letting my buddies in chat know that I am aware of my privilege in getting >100 fps and that I empathize with their inability to perform well due to their slower machines. And I will do it at every opportunity.
I will destroy their entire base in Ark, rebuild it to my own specifications, then hold ceremonies amongst my tribe recognizing that my new base is built on stolen land.
Back in the day on Tumblr, it was the fad to list your privileges on the front page of your blog. And people would put things like: “White, able-bodied, neurotypical, conventionally attractive.” Which even at the time cracked me right up - imagine a dweeby too-online teenager humbly and contritely apologizing for being so hot it’s an injustice!
I was in a talk once with a senior psychoanalyst and one of the students asked him a question about being "authentic" as a therapist. His response was something to the effect of "beware of supposed 'authenticity'. If you think you're being 'really authentic', that is the time to be most on the lookout for self-deception". He also commented on the limits of introspection and how it can be used more often than not as rationalization that's dressed-up as "doing the work", a trap to which we seem particularly susceptible.
I never bought the idea of "doing the work" as internal. What matters is what other people can observe, which is actions. I have even gone so far as to think the idea of a self independent of actions is where everything went wrong in psychology. We are what we do.
If it's just some stranger tweeting into the abyss, I don't care whatsoever. Where this becomes a problem is when it's an industry-sponsored struggle session and you're required to participate. I've had to send the following post to various people to explain my position in these situations: https://www.hadaraviram.com/2020/08/02/why-im-leery-of-racial-confessionals/
It reminds me of the now (apparently) mandatory practice of an organization confessing that their facility is erected on land stolen from a particular Native American group before they get on with whatever their job is. (I'm thinking of two theater companies here in Southern California. This ceremony was the most performative thing I saw.) What does this do, precisely? Who does it help? I have to say that it inspired nothing but cynical contempt in at least one patron - me. Now, if they had tracked down some descendants of those original Native Americans and given the land back to them, no strings attached... THAT would have impressed me, and I would have felt nothing but admiration, certainly more than I felt for their crappy production of MacBeth.
Also, Young Lord Stancil sounds like a Netflix show.
The large midwestern state university where I live and work routinely opens events with a land statement. While they license their old Native American mascot logo for apparel and other doo-dads.
Or literally done anything at all to help Native Americans. Large-scale land repatriation is not happening - Seattle is not getting carved up and handed back to the Skokomish - and many of the remaining communities are in very bad shape, from infrastructure to healthcare to crime. Back in the day, I did some small business development on the pueblos of the southwest. It pisses me off that people waste energy on land acknowledgments when there's so much work to be done.
It's not about what *I* want for them. But ask people on a pueblo whether they'd like their water systems to work, want better health systems, and want sex offenders to be prosecuted. These services function at a much higher level in plenty of remote communities (and many pueblos aren't *that* remote). Nobody's talking subsistence - every pueblo has considerable economic ties outside its borders, and receives federal assistance already.
Yes, these are first world amenities which only come from first world tax base, which only comes with a first world economy.
I work in remote Alaska, I meet many fine fun enjoyable people, who grew up in subsistence lifestyle, earn a subsistence income, pay subsistence taxes, and received a subsistence education.
Its colonialism when you or I push our solutions upon these other people.
I should have read the comments before making a comment. My response to those dumbass stolen land acknowledges is simple: Then give it back or STFU.
"Young Lord Stancil sounds like a Netflix show" I'd give you several more hearts for this if I could. It would be about a 19th century Dandy in England.
Sometimes they can give it back. Nothing stopping Ole Ben & Jerry from turning over the keys to their ice cream factory. Any university that owns its campus can deed it to they tribe they stole it from, and teach on line courses.
A sub to The Atlantic is one of my best choices over the last year tbh. Great magazine. I haven't read this yet but I'll give it a read. Instinctively I think I support the idea of land acknowledgement, but I'll keep an open mind as I go in.
No, I don't think it is. I've read a lot of great articles in it – by Helen Lewis, Sam Kriss, Graeme Wood, and Adam Kotsko's amazing essay 'Moralism Is Ruining Cultural Criticism'.
She's basically a lib but I think she does a very good job of highlighting some of the absurdities and excesses of the social justice libs, and her article on the changing face of British Feminism was very good too. Her recent article on the 'cancelling' of the grandmaster of the Satanic Temple was hilarious. "In a post on Medium after the Randazza story blew up, Blackmore decried, among other things, a 'lack of inclusion and equitability' in the Temple."
Actually I'm gonna copy and paste two of the final paragraphs from that one, just for people to enjoy:
"The Satanic rebels argue that their demands—more transparency, more humility, and more democracy—are reasonable and necessary to fulfill the Seven Tenets and continue the struggle for justice. They want the Temple to be an avowedly progressive organization that puts out statements supporting child gender transition and Black Lives Matter. They want Greaves to be more careful about his associations, because his friendships and professional relationships reflect badly on them. Above all, they want to know that, if necessary, they could discipline or remove him. “Lucien, if you’re listening,” the Molotov Mocktails organizer said during that fateful Zoom event, “this is our religion, we—the royal we—built this together. You are, at this point, just some guy who got the ball rolling. Let us take charge.”
In response, Greaves has done something I haven’t seen any other progressive leader do: He has explicitly rejected these demands. In the recent blowup, he told me via email, “I was astonished by how many times I was told, ‘all you have to do is post a message stating … ’ This would be followed by a meaningless script that contained absolutely no tangible call to action, but instead merely served the purpose of letting people know that I was prepared to conform to their every demand and to their empty catch-phrase laden language.”"
I don't support it at all. There are long-term legal consequences to this stuff. In some future time, people will be able to appropriate land belonging to other people because of their racial makeup.
Which is what happened before!
Except the original victims are long dead, and all you accomplishing is creating is new victims. Worse, it retroactively justifies the original crime if seizing land on the basis of ancestry is legitimate.
It's not revenge if the people who did it aren't even around, and the people losing had nothing to do with it. It's just a new crime.
Maybe we can distinguish between a land acknowledgment on an email or at the beginning of a talk, and a public memorial for commemoration and education. If a school wants to build something dignified to acknowledge what happened to the previous inhabitants of its campus, great. Get a member of that indigenous group to design something and pay them really well. Host some meaningful educational events to accompany the unveiling. I'm completely on board with that.
So give the land back, you assholes! Otherwise, what the hell are you saying? That you took it, and are really sorry it happened, but it's too late now to do anything about it?
Fuck you! Can you imagine someone saying this to you after stealing everything you own?
It would be much more helpful if they paid said native communities a ground rent of something like 1% of the land value per year. People more Georgist than me can probably find a better figure and explain how to distinguish land and property values.
Pretty hard on youngish Mr. Stancil, whoever he is. Was that constructive criticism? Or a not-so-veiled attempt to display oneself as being one who sees beyond those who claim to see beyond? (I did see Beyonce once. Ork-ork-ork-ork, cough-cough)
Mr. Stancil, among other things, all but called a Black writer an Uncle Tom yesterday because that Black writer disagrees with Stancil about the term "woke." He's an adult who panhandles for virtue points all day long and does so in a way that habitually derides the very people who he claims to speak for. He can get fucked. If you're in the arena, you're in the arena.
I saw that exchange yesterday too. And I agree, he sucks. I was hoping you'd mention it in this article since it really shows the house of cards he's building for himself, but ah well. No big deal.
Ah, scales are falling from mine eyes now. Why didn't you say all that in your original posting?
Mr. Stancil, again whoever he is, is dead to me.
But, Fred, must we all constantly walk on water? I'm afraid that most of us sink quite rapidly. It's appropriate, I suppose, to point out mistakes, but can we expect and demand Socratic-like insight, learning, and wisdom in all people at all times? I mean, by design at least half of us reside in the Land of the Jerks; in fact, I'm mayor or a large city there. Lead us out; don't just point us out, please.
I don't know, maybe name-calling and public shaming work. (My grandson said I looked pregnant, which directly caused me to lose 50 pounds. True story. And I want to lose even more. So maybe Mr. Stancil will, by your blunt efforts, become aware of his spiritual location on that famous Damascene road. Whatever works, I suppose.)
All the best, as always, and thanks for responding. I know you're busy. And, say, I learned a lot from your latest book. Who knew how big and how much clout and damage nonprofits have and do? I didn't; and I'll bet most people don't either.
I had a similar experience during my postgraduate studies. In the end, it’s just word games, nothing ever happens. It’s as if the endless invention of new terms, identities, language games, manners were a compensatory mechanism for the objective failure of the socialist movement in the West over the past century. And then there’s also clearly the status-seeking element of the endless privilege-checking, as you note; whole departments of ‘scholars’ essentially competing to see who can say the right words in the right way until someone else trips up and they can stop the pretence of civility.
There’s such a shallowness and paranoia to it all, especially in ‘progressive’ academic departments. Friends and working relationships all depend on whether you have the exact same beliefs as everyone else, and express them in exactly the right way.
I also think a lot of it is essentially identity construction. It's people who really *do nothing* other than passively consume things self-constructing something trying to be tangible. It's the same thing as all the theory nerds on Twitter basically theorycrafting their niche political identity ('Straussian post-anarchist communization' or whatever.) It's just words chasing other words.
I think one of the moments I realised I’d had enough was when, in a bit of an argument over some political issue or another, I said, ‘even if what you say is true, you need to actually convince and persuade people, not scream and yell at them in the hope you’ll cow and shame them into pretending they do.’
And she said, ‘No, I don’t, there’s no argument or debate to be had here. There are people on my side and the rest are bigots.’
What immediately came to mind was Adorno's famous line that, “Intolerance of ambiguity is the mark of an authoritarian personality.”
I realised I really wasn't suited to a world where I had to navigate that sort of shit. Glad I left that life behind me. I can still read the writers who move me, from Adorno to Houellebecq, but on my own terms, now.
"It’s as if the endless invention of new terms, identities, language games, manners were a compensatory mechanism for the objective failure of the socialist movement in the West over the past century. "
Keep in mind that none of these performative word games change the way the economic pie is sliced.
Of course, that's my point – in the absence of any meaningful economic or political power, the copium is huffed and expresses itself in the form of endlessly policing people's language and demanding diversity quotas etc. None of it threatens capitalism at all.
Hell, Goldman Sachs or Citibank is happy to play along.
A couple of token hires, a unisex bathroom or two, and they buy allies against the kinds of changes that might actually take money out of their pockets.
Totally. It also boggles my mind that, in a necessarily distorted and mystified way, even conservatives can see the cynicism of these corporations better than the idpol liberals can!
This is because "conservativism" in the US today is basically a shotgun marriage between Local Gentry and white Evangelicals, neither of whose interests are all that intimately tied to those of financial capitalism, and in many cases, they see the bank as an enemy.
"Liberals" by contrast, are the temporary alliance of the PMC and various minorities. If the PMC run nothing else, they are necessarily in charge of financial institutions. (Would you want your local electrical contractor setting investment policy for a regional bank?)
I imean, even here in the UK, where religion is basically non-existent outside of the Muslim, Hindu and Sikh minorities, we have the exact same sort of phenomenon tbh.
I said this in another comment stream recently (I lose track) but as someone who believes capitalism better tan alternatives, I now fully support this bullshit. These people spending all their time in pronoun purity spirals is perfect.
And it should be self-evident from this that none of the aforementioned is instructed in high academia, as the thought of it reveals the foundation that institutionalized education is built upon - it would be self-indicting to speak the truth of their situation.
Despite the vast amount of value universities provide for the cultivation of knowledge in any given field as it stands, I think it’s clear that academics and intellectuals are either fully aware of their position and accept it, are ignorant of it beyond the scope of what they care about, or are to afraid to admit to reality.
It's a mixture of all three. Obviously there are plenty of academics who believe all of this naturally, so they have no trouble (they're usually the first to pounce). There are some where it's mostly just irrelevant to what they do so they don't care (especially in the natural sciences)
But I know plenty of academics who've censored themselves from speaking their actual opinions on a range of topics because of the reaction it would very predictably engender. I wrote my Master's thesis on critical theory under the supervision of a brilliant Feminist philosopher. I remember when the Hypatia transracialism controversy was kicking off (look it up if you haven't heard about it before, big thing over here in UK academia), I asked her about it, and she said that most people she knew including herself were basically self-censoring because of the viciousness of it all.
It basically self-selects for those able to toe the line or at least stay quiet.
When I refused to sign the petition I mentioned, on the basis that I thought it was spurious, lacked any input from actual black people within the department, was pretty offensive in the way that it co-opted the death of a black man with the use of the term 'BAME', and that it was actually pretty white-saviour-ish to try and 'speak on their behalf' (because, apparently, 'POC are already tired of the daily microaggressions, they need us to step up as allies') I was basically roundly accused of being a reactionary or a racist or that I didn't care about racism and needed to examine my privilege – this is from literal blue-haired straight white women, of course.
I ended up telling them to fuck off and stopped bothering going to any of the social events and spent more time with my mates at the pub. Much better for my mental health.
Cheers mate, I’m a bit envious of some natural sciences and mathematics for what you mentioned. Have always had an affinity for them. What were your studies of focus, who was your supervisor? You mentioned Adorno earlier too, his work is of particular interest to me, especially given his situation as an academic and what his stance was regarding developed Western capitalism. I also hold concerns that not much progress has been made in hegemonic feminism since Beauvoir, always happy to hear about people doing good work.
I have a background in Poly Sci, have gone up through a masters in music performance, and continue to study outside academia including philosophy. A lot of this behavior is rife in classical music culture because there is an incentive structure that is maintained by many to either stay safely housed within academia or to ingratiate yourself with elite class crowds through patronage. The situation of classical music at this time makes the people who approach culture and art too abstractly far more susceptible to this type of postmodernist behavior in question. I’ve also had to withdraw myself from my trained field lest they distance themselves from academic culture and certain social trends.
Once had a composer feel inclined to lecture me on “white privileged” and “intersectionality” (he’s a gay white dude, albeit a very dense, autistic and self-proclaimed “transgender” fellow) just because I treated another composer on a shared commission project (a black chick) like a professional and gave her constructive feedback on her draft work according with our contract. I was gaslit, labeled a sexist and a racist by both of them, she broke contract, and then the first composer had the audacity to later tell me my criticism of her work was correct. Didn’t matter what my perspective or background of study was apparently because they had been commissioned by our group’s AD (I took over the project after they left) under the auspices of DEI. Didn’t matter that they were both promoting a racist/sexist infantilization and victimization of the poor composer who forgot or disregard her own contract stipulations and couldn’t handle criticism of material she was less experienced in writing for than I am. The best part is that the dude eventually finished the commission himself after an agreement and then a few years of unprofessional and inconsistent communication and delays after the threat of arbitration. Turns out I’m not the first person who has had to force his hand.
That Hypatia controversy is insane, I’m familiar with it by proxy due to reading Adolf Reed. Transracialism will only increase in social value so long as gender remains abstracted from sex.
Really interesting to read that. I know very little about classical music or aesthetic theory, to my shame. I like to think I have fairly 'good taste' by normie standards and I've read a bit of critical theory about music and things but that's about it.
Just to briefly clarify, my insight into the natural sciences comes from one of my closest friends who completed his PhD at Cambridge in Material Sciences (I think that was what it was called? I vaguely remember half a dozen blurry pub conversations where he tried to explain something to do with ions to me), but he's a highly literary guy who writes poetry, plays music (black metal), and enjoys relaxing by reading Russian Literature, so my impression comes from his experiences.
I'd rather not name names or institutions, only because I'm still recovering from the more-or-less total nervous breakdown my experiences gave me, but my area of focus cut through philosophy, politics and jurisprudence. I was interested, at the time, in the question of foundations, in moral and political life, which gradually developed into a fascination with Deleuze's philosophy, which seemed to resolve certain tensions (between foundationalism and post-foundationalism; if difference is prior to identity, the tension dissolves, even if it resolves into a new problem). My Master's was more about Carl Schmitt and the Frankfurt School, like Walter Benjamin, who actually attended some of Schmitt's lectures and exchanged letters of admiration with each other.
I honestly think the sort of experiences you're referring to are widespread across the humanities and social sciences, and that it really comes down to Peter Turchin's theory of elite overproduction. I said a few minutes ago in a reply to a different comment that I think this "because it explains in a systematic way both the general problem which all of us can see (endless social justice wars, clawing for the top of the power pyramid of 'un-privilege') and what I saw for about 5 years personally, up-close, in British academia.
Ever more massively overeducated, underemployed people who think they're entitled to be at the top of at least *some* hierarchy or ladder of recognition." But there's only so many jobs for them, and those who lose out feel aggrieved and create counter-elites ('Conservatism is the new punk!'), or fight with tooth and claw to make their way to the top of the pyramid ('Ummm, actually, that was really problematic and offensive to differently-housed post-racialised people. Not a good look, big yikes').
It's just different elites whose aspirations have been frustrated seeking to claw their way to the top and to be Properly Recognised for their Talent and Righteousness.
I think your friend’s experience tracks well enough. I don’t know enough about the natural science fields or math beyond trivialities and personal enjoyment, but it seems consistent with the material robustness of STEM field job employment from an outside perspective.
Understandable. Those kinds of experiences can be a little bit psychologically harrowing imo. I like your interests tho, I would enjoy reading Deleuze. I also like Benjamin, I think you might like Berthold Brecht and Jonas Ceika if you like him. Definitely check out Yusuf Lateef’s Autophysiopsychic music, he condenses the kernel of truth to the emotive expression of musical performance in just 5 pages prefacing his instruction method.
Totally agree on elite overproduction. The way it affects the music industry is weird because there’s always a demand for entertainment (despite how predominantly undervalued music is on par, outside of top-end pop industry antics and celebrity-status touring acts), but classical programs are not always forthcoming about the practicality of what a given performance track’s purpose is for. A few choices emerge, including but not limited to - stay in academia because it’s safe from the real world, perpetuate elite social capture to maintain cultural status in niche performing circles (literally commission-performance cycles where people play one-off projects for paltry crowds or wealthy donors, usually at a university, and then promptly forget about it), burn out of performance and perpetuate elite social capture in PMC positions with no proper outlet for your qualifications, go into military reserve bands if you’re a wind player or municipal orchestras if you’re on strings (the primary use for classical performance degrees at the moment, with the latter dwindling), or take up a day job and sort out the difference between performance as a trade and as an art while trying to work a gig scene when you can.
I picked the last option and began cross-training in jazz and folk. I needed more practical performance skills in my arsenal like style flexibility and improv, and needed more agency than what my degree provided me as a performer.
Sounds like we ended up following similar paths, and for similar reasons, then. I'm sort of enjoying not having to constantly engage in philosophy, thinking about politics etc., just earning some fairly easy money and chilling, playing some video games, reading some interesting online essays when I get the time and urge to do so, thinking about questions that matter to me personally when they matter to me, and finding answers where I can, rather than trying to hit deadlines etc. Letting my brain matter slowly rot to death. I'll be getting back to writing and so on in the near future, but I'm not in a huge rush.
Its so shameless how terribly power hungry most academics are, and how entitled to that power they believe themselves to be. Academics make a show of eschewing money, but that's not the only type of power. I feel like we need a Marxism for forms of power that aren't capital.
I agree. I think it's one reason why I find Peter Turchin's theory of elite overproduction utterly persuasive, because it explains in a systematic way both the general problem which all of us can see (endless social justice wars, clawing for the top of the power pyramid of 'un-privilege') and what I saw for about 5 years personally, up-close, in British academia.
Ever more massively overeducated, underemployed people who think they're entitled to be at the top of at least *some* hierarchy or ladder of recognition.
I just wanted to resolve my own existential anxiety by investigating thoughtful thinkers like Deleuze and Heidegger. And apparently I was good enough to get a full scholarship to try and do that.
Apparently I'd failed to understand that the 'stakes' were 'much higher than that', that this was really about enacting social justice in the true halls of white male power, etc.
Isn’t there an internet ‘law’ that says the battles are most brutal when the stakes are most small? That was my experience in academia in a low third tier university chemistry department: there were so few resources that the competition for the scraps was intense, the faculty had divided into factions based on research area and the professors in one faction would defame the professors and grad students in the others in the hopes of getting more resources, say the piece of equipment that would assist the research of their faction. It made student research presentations to the department intensely cruel affairs, and the key, as in the corporate world, to getting what you needed was to have the backing of the department secretary. Luckily we both smoked and I had her ear more often than not, but I got the hell out of there with my MS and never looked back.
How much do you have and where can I apply for it? Gift is preferred over a grant so that I don't have to give more than half of the money to the university.
If you went into industry, you'd make a lot more money. So, academic compete with each other for grants and funding and make a big show of that, but then its the opposite with the size of their overall income. They are "better" than those that go into industry and make a ton of money.
These performative social-media driven discourses are so tiresome. And as much as I love your writing, Freddie, and have read you for years, as a woman I don't need (or want) anyone to "do the right thing" for women. I expect that from my family and close friends, not from the progressive populace as a whole. And if the question is, "how can I support women?" well, maybe one answer is to put yourself out there and recognize when someone could use some help (like giving rides to a kid on my son's soccer team whose single mom has other kids she has to be with). And those little actions are no big deal at all and are done day in and day out by people who don't go squawking on social media about how they are helping the downtrodden and disadvantaged. And my guess is they have far more positive influence than garnering thousands of likes or whatever about "checking your privilege."
I guess I'm trying to say that I can't believe anyone who lives in the real world can take someone like Will Stancil seriously.
But this is where so many people fell asleep at the wheel in the past decade - people like Stancil dominate extremely influential institutions and professions. This discourse matters.
I get that, I just don't see an endgame in sight. The people driving the discourse have no interest in modifying their opinions and anyone who's not an acolyte is just going to disengage. So we'll end up with (and we already have, probably) institutions completely at odds with the people they are purportedly trying to help.
(I know you've said this all before, Freddie... :) )
See, I agree with Freddie that some of this stuff is out of hand - especially in terms of being a performative substitute for actual action toward justice - but I see it getting better day by day, not worse. I see opinions evolving on these topics all the time. People can only live in contradictions so long, and a lot of these concepts are (slowly) moving away from the pop-diversity it's grown into. I think it's a reactionary mistake to throw the baby out with the bath water, and there are a lot of people pretending to object to the performativity who never actually liked the baby in the first place.
(FWIW I'm not saying you're doing that, jenn33, and I certainly don't think Freddie is doing that, though I think plenty of his readers pretend he is)
"The people driving the discourse have no interest in modifying their opinions and anyone who's not an acolyte is just going to disengage."
The true believers cannot be converted but they can be marginalized. Years ago the Democrats were tried of losing elections because they were viewed as too liberal so they embarked on a program of nominating moderates and, as a consequence, banished their far left wing to college campuses and out of public sight.
I can't help but wonder what will happen if Trump is re-elected next year. Will history repeat itself?
The anti-racist fixation on personal, internal beliefs feels much more like a religious act than a political one. Kendi grew up in a very religious household, and this quote of his stuck with me: "I cannot disconnect my parents' religious strivings to be Christian from my secular strivings to be an anti-racist." His perspective, which in many unproductive ways became "our" perspective for a year or more, was a simplistic morality code that others could broadcast to appear to be on the right side of history. The work was to identify the sin and shame the sinner into conformance. Which is a terrible way to create social change on the left... if only someone would write a book about this phenomenon. It might explain why so little has been accomplished these last few years
> Imagine if I said to Stancil, “your certainty that racism/sexism/homophobia are powerful forces in the world is, at best, qualified by your limited perspective.” Do you think he’d agree? No, of course not - the truths he knows are eternal, certain, existential. And it will never occur to him that, in this, he’s just like those white men he’s critiquing.
From experience, he would probably actually say "yes", serve up some lukewarm Foucault-esque platitudes like second-rate hotdish at a potluck, point to some non-white people he's "learning from", maybe acknowledge that race is a social construct before falling back on "strategic essentialism" if he's feeling spicy, and then continue to act in a way that only makes sense if he had answered "no".
Again, it is always the same people who bring up these Ivy League terms. Checking privilege is always a talking point among people that have more privilege than they know what to do with. It's never a person who is working in a soup kitchen who sees actual suffering. Because that person knows more than anybody that talk is the cheapest currency out there.
"This is of course much greater than Stancil and greater even than privilege checking: modern identity politics contains a vast set of discursive tools that are meant to prompt self-critique but which are used, in practice, for the valorization of the individuals who most aggressively and shamelessly beat the drum."
The point of modern "privilege" discourse is to provide the in-group a ready-made stick with which to beat people they don't like, a sin that out-group members didn't choose, did nothing to deserve, and and can never change, regardless how piteously they beat their breasts and confess endlessly their crime of being born a member of the wrong caste.
At least the Dharmic religions have reincarnation to look forward to.
Totally unrelated, but this reminded me of some writing I saw on a bathroom wall during medical school. Someone had written, "List of things you can't YOLO", leaving space below for people to write responses. The first answer was "Hinduism".
the chemistry building at my undergrad school and a rather pristine men's room stall, with a single bit of graffiti scrawled into the door, that read: "Heisenberg may have sat here"
OK, that has nothing to do with your comment, but still reminded me.
Prove it.
Our P Chem prof was named Dr. Sly. One of our final exam questions had to do with the probability of coffee molecules passing through the side wall of the ceramic mug. Top 3 of hardest courses I had to take. Hardest was Systems. After that Linear Algebra, where I at least learned the word axiomatic
HMC?
Si.
It's Original Sin, with a rainbow flag. And no Jesus to save us.
Not to mention that we sinners also have to suffer endless finger-wagging lectures from The Saved.
I restacked this excerpt. Perfectly encapsulates it.
What is restacking?
If you select an excerpt from the article, a little black tooltip box should generate with the option to share or restack the quote. Restacking is sort of like retweeting - except it's just a snippet of the original article.
Real question for progressives/leftists: Have you ever actually legitimately "checked your privilege" at some point? If so, what did it consist of/look like? What did this privilege-checking consist of at a mechanistic level?
Like, I have worried about whether I am a good person, in the way that one does. I find that's both sufficient and insufficient, in a way that is true for all of us.
Yes. I've had many moments like that, including ones that have caused me to reach out to people and retract/apologize for some positions or ideas I took in the past. Normal stuff.
But I kind of get the idea that the "checking" in this context has to be both more performative and more anguished than that. And that you have to be public about it, very public.
I think any decent person should consider the extent to which their perspective on any matter is shaped by their life experience. For example, is my assessment of parole and risk impacted by the fact that I haven't lost an immediate family member to homicide? Are my expectations from my classroom too high because I didn't spend formative years of my education dysfunctionally studying on Zoom because of a global pandemic? Are my tastes in style and fashion impacted by what I can afford and others cannot (or things I cannot afford and others can)? But I think that the minute the exercise is performed to an audience, it loses 100% of its value.
I cannot stand the American habit of assigning authority based on proximity to experience or tragedy.
So you got mugged. Who cares? Does that mean you're now qualified to discuss criminal justice policy with a PhD? I can tell you right now that this belief is not universal and that people in other countries shake their heads when they come across this.
If you're a cancer survivor frankly I don't care what you think about survival. The person I want to talk to is your doctor.
I have a more nuanced perspective on this. I do see that crime can have personal implications that matter, for example, for how victims should be treated in a courtroom. I can also see how important policies pertaining to bedside manner and informed consent should take patients' experiences and perspectives into account. And I can see how someone who has just been released after a long prison sentence would know firsthand what his or her initial struggles and acute needs are and could provide guidance on how to offer him or her immediate assistance in their first steps in outside society. At the same time, I think the idea that the person closest to the traumatizing experience should be the world curator of all policy about it, to the exclusion of expertise, and sometimes when in a state that makes it difficult to generalize, is a very big problem in my field.
I think a large part of the underlying problem is this country's traditional distrust of authority/expertise.
Individual experience is fine but how is it utilized? We don't give carte blanche to rape victims to design prisons or set judicial penalties for rape (or ay least we shouldn't). Rather we let experts survey the individual experiences of victims and then change policy based on thar. The insanity of presenting victims as "experts" based merely on their victim status is a uniquely American fallacy.
Not design prisons, no. But inform policy decisions what should and should not be allowed on cross examination of rape victims? Not as ultimate arbiters and moral curators, but as valuable contributors to the conversation? Sure, I'm very interested in their perspective on that.
"what should and should not be allowed on cross examination of rape victims?"
Absolutely not. Rules on cross examination are devised with the goal of holding fair trials and determining guilt or innocence. Anything that upsets that balance works counter to that purpose. It's one step down a slippery slope.
Right. To me, it’s mostly about self awareness. I have sometimes withheld comment on a young person’s college education decision because attending college now is a vastly different enterprise than when I went through it. That kind of inner questioning is as much “checking my privilege” as I can tolerate.
You don't backtalk to your doctor or your plumber (within reason). Simply acknowledging that somebody else knows more than you do about a specific topic is just normal human existence.
For that reason I would absolutely defer to an 18 year old on the college admissions process (or even whether college is justified in the first place). I haven't paid close attention to the subject in decades.
The part where this completely normal human behavior goes off the rails is when--surprise, surprise--race is dragged into the picture.
Yes, endlessly, and it did nothing except give me a massive psychic complex.
I had a middle-class childhood, born to two parents who were born into very working-class backgrounds. I went to a fee-paying school, but which was only affordable for my parents because my dad was a teacher there which took about 75% off the fees. My friends at school were wealthy, far wealthier than us. It left me with a deeply confused sense of self.
I still have massive hangups about my own identity – are my politics simply a kind of act of guilt I feel on some level about the ease of my own childhood (‘I’m not like the others!’), or the predictable ‘champagne socialism’ of someone who never really had to struggle? Am I just a vector of predictable traits?
It can be deeply unhelpful.
Yes...but mostly in nontraditional ways? So, I'm a lawyer sitting in my cushy office, advising the federal government, so I fairly frequently say 'this seems like the safest legal answer to me, rangers/biologists/archaeologists/whatever, is that actually workable for you, as you have yo do it, not just talk about it?'
I have, but since I don’t post on social media, the only one who heard me was my neighbor’s cat.
Did you annoy the cat? 'Cause they will piss and crap in your shrubs.
Now *that’s* unchecked privilege. Who knew cats were wealthy cishet white males?
Technically, they have orange tabby privilege. But "un-technically", they don't care about all this bullshit (cats don't do "cishet"); they just shit in your planter and eventually lick their ass for clean up.
Dogs, on the other hand, are fully on board with the proggies:
https://babylonbee.com/news/controversial-paw-patrol-episode-has-chase-get-neutered-to-become-transgender
I've try to do this regularly, and find hearing about others doing so helpful in that it's hard to know what to do with a broad and amorphous concept like "check your privilege" without examples.
Though, I don't usually think of my examples as that, because the phrase we know is "check your privilege" - as in, exactly what Freddie describes, a thing you say to someone else, usually as a way to tell them they're wrong about something. Honestly, an act of aggression, even if motivated by justice.
Anyway, I find it most useful to do when I find myself having unusual feelings about other people, either positive or negative. Two examples I can give, both from my adventures in public transit in Washington DC:
1 - going into the Metro, and a black teen in a white tank top runs past, and hops the turnstile. I reflected on how I might feel differently if the guy I'd seen was a white man in a suit and tie. I wasn't especially negative about the teen, but realized that I would absolutely assume that the white guy had somewhere important to be, and thus skipped paying for that reason. I didn't make that assumption about the teen, though obviously race and dress have little to do with how important one's engagements are.
2- on the train, saw a mother engaging in a very sweet way with her young child, reading to them and patiently helping with the hard parts. I realized that this is not uncommon behavior, I only noticed it because it was a black woman and child - most of my friends have not had kids themselves, so most of the parent/child interactions I see are my white friends, who are generally middle class and good parents. But none of my black friends have children yet, so my primary biases about black parents come from seeing them in brief interactions on public transit - brief, stressful, and they only stick out when they seem like bad parents. I realized I had internalized a sense that black women were worse parents, such that this good one I happened to encounter stuck out to me.
Both these reflections helped me, in terms of identifying biases I didn't realize I had, so now I think about those populations differently - I try to reflect on how I might feel differently in a given situation if they were a different race, or class, or disability status, and how I can extend the benefit of the doubt to them in ways that are as automatic as i do with white people or middle class people.
And, like others have said - mostly useful as an individual, private exercise, or as here as an illustrative example.
(I also have about one million of these from my work as an HR person who has reviewed thousands of resumes over the years)
Yes. I have always assumed that most people do it while they read about the experiences of people who are not like them. It's all about "Tell me what it's like not to be me."
I think that curious readers have always "checked their privilege." It's not something invented in 2014.
Every time I check it, I find myself a little short. Which is not the obvious intent.
I wonder sometimes though, what was the original intent, the first time it was said in a conversation. Is it (1) examine your privilege and compare it to mine (the default setting now), or (2) leave it at the door (like your overcoat when you walk into an art museum)?
You've laid out really well something I've felt for a long time, which is an annoyance with white people who shit on White People. It's always weird to me. Even if they ARE a very good ally or whatever - surely they weren't always one; they themselves were more than likely once those very White People they decry. Because of this, it feels to me like they're obligated to have a little empathy towards their own - or at least not pretend like they don't know where their fellow white folks are coming from.
And that's important, IMO, because they as fellow white people to those they look down on are the ones with the power to actually, potentially, change those people's minds. Because bigoted white people are way more likely to listen to other white people than they are to nonwhite folks. And so if they want to be true allies, a good role for them to take on would be to educate their fellow white folks. And to do that effectively, you have to come from a place of empathy; otherwise, why should the other person listen to you in the first place?
I don't know if I'm making any sense, and I'm sure there's plenty to disagree with in what I'm saying, but. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Also, I'm probably tangenting off a bit from your actual post, but hopefully some relevance comes across.
I don't disagree with any of this. I boggle at the progress we've achieved by seducing the world with our decadent liberal values; how is becoming hard-hearted and bitter the next logical step?
It's not just white people. Lots of minorities who claim to represent their communities also harbour a lot of disdain for their own. It's all a race to be among the chosen few in a new elite class that transcends race, religion, geography, sexual orientation (but of course, not class, because this is about the new elite, after all). So whether you're white or black or Asian or Latino, if you're trying to be in this new class, you're disgusted and irritated by the "backwards" people in your own group that are seemingly holding you back. However, you still have to pretend you identify with them because of the identitarian points they give you, which is the only way you feel relevant.
You're kind of missing my point.
They don't think of themselves as white people. Those other people are white people. Because white people are bad.
It's strange because in any other context, publicly fixating on how wealthy or able bodied or fill-in-the-blank-privileged you are would be considered bragging.
Like, if someone kept telling me in conversation how they grew up wealthy and how that gives them a leg up over me, I would not then think they are self-aware. I would think the opposite.
I just got a new gaming rig with a 4090 for the video card. I'm going to start letting my buddies in chat know that I am aware of my privilege in getting >100 fps and that I empathize with their inability to perform well due to their slower machines. And I will do it at every opportunity.
I will destroy their entire base in Ark, rebuild it to my own specifications, then hold ceremonies amongst my tribe recognizing that my new base is built on stolen land.
I never played, but I understand you can build bases on the backs of dinosaurs. That gives a new twist to the phrase "stolen land".
Back in the day on Tumblr, it was the fad to list your privileges on the front page of your blog. And people would put things like: “White, able-bodied, neurotypical, conventionally attractive.” Which even at the time cracked me right up - imagine a dweeby too-online teenager humbly and contritely apologizing for being so hot it’s an injustice!
"so hot it’s an injustice"
Something I have struggled with my entire life.
"imagine a dweeby too-online teenager humbly and contritely apologizing for being so hot it’s an injustice!"
So that's what that Caroline Polachek song was all about
I was in a talk once with a senior psychoanalyst and one of the students asked him a question about being "authentic" as a therapist. His response was something to the effect of "beware of supposed 'authenticity'. If you think you're being 'really authentic', that is the time to be most on the lookout for self-deception". He also commented on the limits of introspection and how it can be used more often than not as rationalization that's dressed-up as "doing the work", a trap to which we seem particularly susceptible.
I never bought the idea of "doing the work" as internal. What matters is what other people can observe, which is actions. I have even gone so far as to think the idea of a self independent of actions is where everything went wrong in psychology. We are what we do.
But I've had a few addicts in my life.
What, exactly, is even 'doing the work'?
And who's paying for it? Minimum wage, at least?
“Behavior is truth.” —Andrew Vachss
If it's just some stranger tweeting into the abyss, I don't care whatsoever. Where this becomes a problem is when it's an industry-sponsored struggle session and you're required to participate. I've had to send the following post to various people to explain my position in these situations: https://www.hadaraviram.com/2020/08/02/why-im-leery-of-racial-confessionals/
It reminds me of the now (apparently) mandatory practice of an organization confessing that their facility is erected on land stolen from a particular Native American group before they get on with whatever their job is. (I'm thinking of two theater companies here in Southern California. This ceremony was the most performative thing I saw.) What does this do, precisely? Who does it help? I have to say that it inspired nothing but cynical contempt in at least one patron - me. Now, if they had tracked down some descendants of those original Native Americans and given the land back to them, no strings attached... THAT would have impressed me, and I would have felt nothing but admiration, certainly more than I felt for their crappy production of MacBeth.
Also, Young Lord Stancil sounds like a Netflix show.
The large midwestern state university where I live and work routinely opens events with a land statement. While they license their old Native American mascot logo for apparel and other doo-dads.
I’ve really only seen it on community college course syllabi
Or literally done anything at all to help Native Americans. Large-scale land repatriation is not happening - Seattle is not getting carved up and handed back to the Skokomish - and many of the remaining communities are in very bad shape, from infrastructure to healthcare to crime. Back in the day, I did some small business development on the pueblos of the southwest. It pisses me off that people waste energy on land acknowledgments when there's so much work to be done.
What exactly is it you want native peoples to be? Want them to be exactly like you; that's colonialism.
Native people can have:
A. Subsistence lifestyle, with subsistence lifestyle economics, i.e. extreme poverty.
B. First world lifestyle, which requires first world integration; which won't happen on a remote reservation.
I don't want them to be anything. They need to decide what they want to be and then be that. Same with Hawaiians.
It's not about what *I* want for them. But ask people on a pueblo whether they'd like their water systems to work, want better health systems, and want sex offenders to be prosecuted. These services function at a much higher level in plenty of remote communities (and many pueblos aren't *that* remote). Nobody's talking subsistence - every pueblo has considerable economic ties outside its borders, and receives federal assistance already.
Yes, these are first world amenities which only come from first world tax base, which only comes with a first world economy.
I work in remote Alaska, I meet many fine fun enjoyable people, who grew up in subsistence lifestyle, earn a subsistence income, pay subsistence taxes, and received a subsistence education.
Its colonialism when you or I push our solutions upon these other people.
And to think the USA is “behind” both Canada and Australia on the land acknowledgement thing! Buckle up, friends
New Zealand, or whatever it's going to be called, is even further down the path than the others.
I should have read the comments before making a comment. My response to those dumbass stolen land acknowledges is simple: Then give it back or STFU.
"Young Lord Stancil sounds like a Netflix show" I'd give you several more hearts for this if I could. It would be about a 19th century Dandy in England.
The point is that they can't give it back but they feel bad about doing nothing so they decided to do something.
The problem is that sometimes doing something genuinely is worse than doing nothing.
Sometimes they can give it back. Nothing stopping Ole Ben & Jerry from turning over the keys to their ice cream factory. Any university that owns its campus can deed it to they tribe they stole it from, and teach on line courses.
"Also, Young Lord Stancil sounds like a Netflix show."
I wish that I had a subscription so that I could cancel it.
I love the phrase "Moral Exhibitionism" for this (https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/11/against-land-acknowledgements-native-american/620820/).
A sub to The Atlantic is one of my best choices over the last year tbh. Great magazine. I haven't read this yet but I'll give it a read. Instinctively I think I support the idea of land acknowledgement, but I'll keep an open mind as I go in.
Don't be fooled. The Atlantic is a rag, despite utilizing some pieces that contain substance.
No, I don't think it is. I've read a lot of great articles in it – by Helen Lewis, Sam Kriss, Graeme Wood, and Adam Kotsko's amazing essay 'Moralism Is Ruining Cultural Criticism'.
Hence the qualifier 'despite'...
The Atlantic also highlights some real rubbish. Helen Lewis...lol
She's basically a lib but I think she does a very good job of highlighting some of the absurdities and excesses of the social justice libs, and her article on the changing face of British Feminism was very good too. Her recent article on the 'cancelling' of the grandmaster of the Satanic Temple was hilarious. "In a post on Medium after the Randazza story blew up, Blackmore decried, among other things, a 'lack of inclusion and equitability' in the Temple."
Actually I'm gonna copy and paste two of the final paragraphs from that one, just for people to enjoy:
"The Satanic rebels argue that their demands—more transparency, more humility, and more democracy—are reasonable and necessary to fulfill the Seven Tenets and continue the struggle for justice. They want the Temple to be an avowedly progressive organization that puts out statements supporting child gender transition and Black Lives Matter. They want Greaves to be more careful about his associations, because his friendships and professional relationships reflect badly on them. Above all, they want to know that, if necessary, they could discipline or remove him. “Lucien, if you’re listening,” the Molotov Mocktails organizer said during that fateful Zoom event, “this is our religion, we—the royal we—built this together. You are, at this point, just some guy who got the ball rolling. Let us take charge.”
In response, Greaves has done something I haven’t seen any other progressive leader do: He has explicitly rejected these demands. In the recent blowup, he told me via email, “I was astonished by how many times I was told, ‘all you have to do is post a message stating … ’ This would be followed by a meaningless script that contained absolutely no tangible call to action, but instead merely served the purpose of letting people know that I was prepared to conform to their every demand and to their empty catch-phrase laden language.”"
I don't support it at all. There are long-term legal consequences to this stuff. In some future time, people will be able to appropriate land belonging to other people because of their racial makeup.
Which is what happened before!
Except the original victims are long dead, and all you accomplishing is creating is new victims. Worse, it retroactively justifies the original crime if seizing land on the basis of ancestry is legitimate.
It's not revenge if the people who did it aren't even around, and the people losing had nothing to do with it. It's just a new crime.
Maybe we can distinguish between a land acknowledgment on an email or at the beginning of a talk, and a public memorial for commemoration and education. If a school wants to build something dignified to acknowledge what happened to the previous inhabitants of its campus, great. Get a member of that indigenous group to design something and pay them really well. Host some meaningful educational events to accompany the unveiling. I'm completely on board with that.
I love Graeme Wood.
So give the land back, you assholes! Otherwise, what the hell are you saying? That you took it, and are really sorry it happened, but it's too late now to do anything about it?
Fuck you! Can you imagine someone saying this to you after stealing everything you own?
"I acknowledge I am riding your bike that I stole" as I zip past ...
It would be much more helpful if they paid said native communities a ground rent of something like 1% of the land value per year. People more Georgist than me can probably find a better figure and explain how to distinguish land and property values.
Pretty hard on youngish Mr. Stancil, whoever he is. Was that constructive criticism? Or a not-so-veiled attempt to display oneself as being one who sees beyond those who claim to see beyond? (I did see Beyonce once. Ork-ork-ork-ork, cough-cough)
Mr. Stancil, among other things, all but called a Black writer an Uncle Tom yesterday because that Black writer disagrees with Stancil about the term "woke." He's an adult who panhandles for virtue points all day long and does so in a way that habitually derides the very people who he claims to speak for. He can get fucked. If you're in the arena, you're in the arena.
I saw that exchange yesterday too. And I agree, he sucks. I was hoping you'd mention it in this article since it really shows the house of cards he's building for himself, but ah well. No big deal.
Ah, scales are falling from mine eyes now. Why didn't you say all that in your original posting?
Mr. Stancil, again whoever he is, is dead to me.
But, Fred, must we all constantly walk on water? I'm afraid that most of us sink quite rapidly. It's appropriate, I suppose, to point out mistakes, but can we expect and demand Socratic-like insight, learning, and wisdom in all people at all times? I mean, by design at least half of us reside in the Land of the Jerks; in fact, I'm mayor or a large city there. Lead us out; don't just point us out, please.
I don't know, maybe name-calling and public shaming work. (My grandson said I looked pregnant, which directly caused me to lose 50 pounds. True story. And I want to lose even more. So maybe Mr. Stancil will, by your blunt efforts, become aware of his spiritual location on that famous Damascene road. Whatever works, I suppose.)
All the best, as always, and thanks for responding. I know you're busy. And, say, I learned a lot from your latest book. Who knew how big and how much clout and damage nonprofits have and do? I didn't; and I'll bet most people don't either.
Did the writer tell him to Fuck Off? That is the appropriate response.
I had a similar experience during my postgraduate studies. In the end, it’s just word games, nothing ever happens. It’s as if the endless invention of new terms, identities, language games, manners were a compensatory mechanism for the objective failure of the socialist movement in the West over the past century. And then there’s also clearly the status-seeking element of the endless privilege-checking, as you note; whole departments of ‘scholars’ essentially competing to see who can say the right words in the right way until someone else trips up and they can stop the pretence of civility.
There’s such a shallowness and paranoia to it all, especially in ‘progressive’ academic departments. Friends and working relationships all depend on whether you have the exact same beliefs as everyone else, and express them in exactly the right way.
I also think a lot of it is essentially identity construction. It's people who really *do nothing* other than passively consume things self-constructing something trying to be tangible. It's the same thing as all the theory nerds on Twitter basically theorycrafting their niche political identity ('Straussian post-anarchist communization' or whatever.) It's just words chasing other words.
I think one of the moments I realised I’d had enough was when, in a bit of an argument over some political issue or another, I said, ‘even if what you say is true, you need to actually convince and persuade people, not scream and yell at them in the hope you’ll cow and shame them into pretending they do.’
And she said, ‘No, I don’t, there’s no argument or debate to be had here. There are people on my side and the rest are bigots.’
What immediately came to mind was Adorno's famous line that, “Intolerance of ambiguity is the mark of an authoritarian personality.”
I realised I really wasn't suited to a world where I had to navigate that sort of shit. Glad I left that life behind me. I can still read the writers who move me, from Adorno to Houellebecq, but on my own terms, now.
"It’s as if the endless invention of new terms, identities, language games, manners were a compensatory mechanism for the objective failure of the socialist movement in the West over the past century. "
Keep in mind that none of these performative word games change the way the economic pie is sliced.
Of course, that's my point – in the absence of any meaningful economic or political power, the copium is huffed and expresses itself in the form of endlessly policing people's language and demanding diversity quotas etc. None of it threatens capitalism at all.
Hell, Goldman Sachs or Citibank is happy to play along.
A couple of token hires, a unisex bathroom or two, and they buy allies against the kinds of changes that might actually take money out of their pockets.
Totally. It also boggles my mind that, in a necessarily distorted and mystified way, even conservatives can see the cynicism of these corporations better than the idpol liberals can!
This is because "conservativism" in the US today is basically a shotgun marriage between Local Gentry and white Evangelicals, neither of whose interests are all that intimately tied to those of financial capitalism, and in many cases, they see the bank as an enemy.
"Liberals" by contrast, are the temporary alliance of the PMC and various minorities. If the PMC run nothing else, they are necessarily in charge of financial institutions. (Would you want your local electrical contractor setting investment policy for a regional bank?)
I imean, even here in the UK, where religion is basically non-existent outside of the Muslim, Hindu and Sikh minorities, we have the exact same sort of phenomenon tbh.
I said this in another comment stream recently (I lose track) but as someone who believes capitalism better tan alternatives, I now fully support this bullshit. These people spending all their time in pronoun purity spirals is perfect.
Capitalist hyper-individualism. Keep them busy collecting flair and arguing, the won't notice how separate they are.
Paying your employees a fair wage is expensive; letting them wear pronoun pins is cheap. And either way, you get to look "progressive."
Which is where the rubber meets the road.
And it should be self-evident from this that none of the aforementioned is instructed in high academia, as the thought of it reveals the foundation that institutionalized education is built upon - it would be self-indicting to speak the truth of their situation.
Despite the vast amount of value universities provide for the cultivation of knowledge in any given field as it stands, I think it’s clear that academics and intellectuals are either fully aware of their position and accept it, are ignorant of it beyond the scope of what they care about, or are to afraid to admit to reality.
It's a mixture of all three. Obviously there are plenty of academics who believe all of this naturally, so they have no trouble (they're usually the first to pounce). There are some where it's mostly just irrelevant to what they do so they don't care (especially in the natural sciences)
But I know plenty of academics who've censored themselves from speaking their actual opinions on a range of topics because of the reaction it would very predictably engender. I wrote my Master's thesis on critical theory under the supervision of a brilliant Feminist philosopher. I remember when the Hypatia transracialism controversy was kicking off (look it up if you haven't heard about it before, big thing over here in UK academia), I asked her about it, and she said that most people she knew including herself were basically self-censoring because of the viciousness of it all.
It basically self-selects for those able to toe the line or at least stay quiet.
When I refused to sign the petition I mentioned, on the basis that I thought it was spurious, lacked any input from actual black people within the department, was pretty offensive in the way that it co-opted the death of a black man with the use of the term 'BAME', and that it was actually pretty white-saviour-ish to try and 'speak on their behalf' (because, apparently, 'POC are already tired of the daily microaggressions, they need us to step up as allies') I was basically roundly accused of being a reactionary or a racist or that I didn't care about racism and needed to examine my privilege – this is from literal blue-haired straight white women, of course.
I ended up telling them to fuck off and stopped bothering going to any of the social events and spent more time with my mates at the pub. Much better for my mental health.
Cheers mate, I’m a bit envious of some natural sciences and mathematics for what you mentioned. Have always had an affinity for them. What were your studies of focus, who was your supervisor? You mentioned Adorno earlier too, his work is of particular interest to me, especially given his situation as an academic and what his stance was regarding developed Western capitalism. I also hold concerns that not much progress has been made in hegemonic feminism since Beauvoir, always happy to hear about people doing good work.
I have a background in Poly Sci, have gone up through a masters in music performance, and continue to study outside academia including philosophy. A lot of this behavior is rife in classical music culture because there is an incentive structure that is maintained by many to either stay safely housed within academia or to ingratiate yourself with elite class crowds through patronage. The situation of classical music at this time makes the people who approach culture and art too abstractly far more susceptible to this type of postmodernist behavior in question. I’ve also had to withdraw myself from my trained field lest they distance themselves from academic culture and certain social trends.
Once had a composer feel inclined to lecture me on “white privileged” and “intersectionality” (he’s a gay white dude, albeit a very dense, autistic and self-proclaimed “transgender” fellow) just because I treated another composer on a shared commission project (a black chick) like a professional and gave her constructive feedback on her draft work according with our contract. I was gaslit, labeled a sexist and a racist by both of them, she broke contract, and then the first composer had the audacity to later tell me my criticism of her work was correct. Didn’t matter what my perspective or background of study was apparently because they had been commissioned by our group’s AD (I took over the project after they left) under the auspices of DEI. Didn’t matter that they were both promoting a racist/sexist infantilization and victimization of the poor composer who forgot or disregard her own contract stipulations and couldn’t handle criticism of material she was less experienced in writing for than I am. The best part is that the dude eventually finished the commission himself after an agreement and then a few years of unprofessional and inconsistent communication and delays after the threat of arbitration. Turns out I’m not the first person who has had to force his hand.
That Hypatia controversy is insane, I’m familiar with it by proxy due to reading Adolf Reed. Transracialism will only increase in social value so long as gender remains abstracted from sex.
Really interesting to read that. I know very little about classical music or aesthetic theory, to my shame. I like to think I have fairly 'good taste' by normie standards and I've read a bit of critical theory about music and things but that's about it.
Just to briefly clarify, my insight into the natural sciences comes from one of my closest friends who completed his PhD at Cambridge in Material Sciences (I think that was what it was called? I vaguely remember half a dozen blurry pub conversations where he tried to explain something to do with ions to me), but he's a highly literary guy who writes poetry, plays music (black metal), and enjoys relaxing by reading Russian Literature, so my impression comes from his experiences.
I'd rather not name names or institutions, only because I'm still recovering from the more-or-less total nervous breakdown my experiences gave me, but my area of focus cut through philosophy, politics and jurisprudence. I was interested, at the time, in the question of foundations, in moral and political life, which gradually developed into a fascination with Deleuze's philosophy, which seemed to resolve certain tensions (between foundationalism and post-foundationalism; if difference is prior to identity, the tension dissolves, even if it resolves into a new problem). My Master's was more about Carl Schmitt and the Frankfurt School, like Walter Benjamin, who actually attended some of Schmitt's lectures and exchanged letters of admiration with each other.
I honestly think the sort of experiences you're referring to are widespread across the humanities and social sciences, and that it really comes down to Peter Turchin's theory of elite overproduction. I said a few minutes ago in a reply to a different comment that I think this "because it explains in a systematic way both the general problem which all of us can see (endless social justice wars, clawing for the top of the power pyramid of 'un-privilege') and what I saw for about 5 years personally, up-close, in British academia.
Ever more massively overeducated, underemployed people who think they're entitled to be at the top of at least *some* hierarchy or ladder of recognition." But there's only so many jobs for them, and those who lose out feel aggrieved and create counter-elites ('Conservatism is the new punk!'), or fight with tooth and claw to make their way to the top of the pyramid ('Ummm, actually, that was really problematic and offensive to differently-housed post-racialised people. Not a good look, big yikes').
It's just different elites whose aspirations have been frustrated seeking to claw their way to the top and to be Properly Recognised for their Talent and Righteousness.
I think your friend’s experience tracks well enough. I don’t know enough about the natural science fields or math beyond trivialities and personal enjoyment, but it seems consistent with the material robustness of STEM field job employment from an outside perspective.
Understandable. Those kinds of experiences can be a little bit psychologically harrowing imo. I like your interests tho, I would enjoy reading Deleuze. I also like Benjamin, I think you might like Berthold Brecht and Jonas Ceika if you like him. Definitely check out Yusuf Lateef’s Autophysiopsychic music, he condenses the kernel of truth to the emotive expression of musical performance in just 5 pages prefacing his instruction method.
Totally agree on elite overproduction. The way it affects the music industry is weird because there’s always a demand for entertainment (despite how predominantly undervalued music is on par, outside of top-end pop industry antics and celebrity-status touring acts), but classical programs are not always forthcoming about the practicality of what a given performance track’s purpose is for. A few choices emerge, including but not limited to - stay in academia because it’s safe from the real world, perpetuate elite social capture to maintain cultural status in niche performing circles (literally commission-performance cycles where people play one-off projects for paltry crowds or wealthy donors, usually at a university, and then promptly forget about it), burn out of performance and perpetuate elite social capture in PMC positions with no proper outlet for your qualifications, go into military reserve bands if you’re a wind player or municipal orchestras if you’re on strings (the primary use for classical performance degrees at the moment, with the latter dwindling), or take up a day job and sort out the difference between performance as a trade and as an art while trying to work a gig scene when you can.
I picked the last option and began cross-training in jazz and folk. I needed more practical performance skills in my arsenal like style flexibility and improv, and needed more agency than what my degree provided me as a performer.
Sounds like we ended up following similar paths, and for similar reasons, then. I'm sort of enjoying not having to constantly engage in philosophy, thinking about politics etc., just earning some fairly easy money and chilling, playing some video games, reading some interesting online essays when I get the time and urge to do so, thinking about questions that matter to me personally when they matter to me, and finding answers where I can, rather than trying to hit deadlines etc. Letting my brain matter slowly rot to death. I'll be getting back to writing and so on in the near future, but I'm not in a huge rush.
Plus, there is no accountability; no penalty for getting it wrong. See Thomas Sowell “Intellectuals and Society.”
Its so shameless how terribly power hungry most academics are, and how entitled to that power they believe themselves to be. Academics make a show of eschewing money, but that's not the only type of power. I feel like we need a Marxism for forms of power that aren't capital.
I agree. I think it's one reason why I find Peter Turchin's theory of elite overproduction utterly persuasive, because it explains in a systematic way both the general problem which all of us can see (endless social justice wars, clawing for the top of the power pyramid of 'un-privilege') and what I saw for about 5 years personally, up-close, in British academia.
Ever more massively overeducated, underemployed people who think they're entitled to be at the top of at least *some* hierarchy or ladder of recognition.
I just wanted to resolve my own existential anxiety by investigating thoughtful thinkers like Deleuze and Heidegger. And apparently I was good enough to get a full scholarship to try and do that.
Apparently I'd failed to understand that the 'stakes' were 'much higher than that', that this was really about enacting social justice in the true halls of white male power, etc.
Isn’t there an internet ‘law’ that says the battles are most brutal when the stakes are most small? That was my experience in academia in a low third tier university chemistry department: there were so few resources that the competition for the scraps was intense, the faculty had divided into factions based on research area and the professors in one faction would defame the professors and grad students in the others in the hopes of getting more resources, say the piece of equipment that would assist the research of their faction. It made student research presentations to the department intensely cruel affairs, and the key, as in the corporate world, to getting what you needed was to have the backing of the department secretary. Luckily we both smoked and I had her ear more often than not, but I got the hell out of there with my MS and never looked back.
`Academics make a show of eschewing money'
Not me. Funding graduate students is expensive.
How much do you have and where can I apply for it? Gift is preferred over a grant so that I don't have to give more than half of the money to the university.
If you went into industry, you'd make a lot more money. So, academic compete with each other for grants and funding and make a big show of that, but then its the opposite with the size of their overall income. They are "better" than those that go into industry and make a ton of money.
This is so good. Thank you.
> morality is a function of behavior, not of thought or emotion or intention
ding! ding! ding! ding!
These performative social-media driven discourses are so tiresome. And as much as I love your writing, Freddie, and have read you for years, as a woman I don't need (or want) anyone to "do the right thing" for women. I expect that from my family and close friends, not from the progressive populace as a whole. And if the question is, "how can I support women?" well, maybe one answer is to put yourself out there and recognize when someone could use some help (like giving rides to a kid on my son's soccer team whose single mom has other kids she has to be with). And those little actions are no big deal at all and are done day in and day out by people who don't go squawking on social media about how they are helping the downtrodden and disadvantaged. And my guess is they have far more positive influence than garnering thousands of likes or whatever about "checking your privilege."
I guess I'm trying to say that I can't believe anyone who lives in the real world can take someone like Will Stancil seriously.
But this is where so many people fell asleep at the wheel in the past decade - people like Stancil dominate extremely influential institutions and professions. This discourse matters.
I get that, I just don't see an endgame in sight. The people driving the discourse have no interest in modifying their opinions and anyone who's not an acolyte is just going to disengage. So we'll end up with (and we already have, probably) institutions completely at odds with the people they are purportedly trying to help.
(I know you've said this all before, Freddie... :) )
See, I agree with Freddie that some of this stuff is out of hand - especially in terms of being a performative substitute for actual action toward justice - but I see it getting better day by day, not worse. I see opinions evolving on these topics all the time. People can only live in contradictions so long, and a lot of these concepts are (slowly) moving away from the pop-diversity it's grown into. I think it's a reactionary mistake to throw the baby out with the bath water, and there are a lot of people pretending to object to the performativity who never actually liked the baby in the first place.
(FWIW I'm not saying you're doing that, jenn33, and I certainly don't think Freddie is doing that, though I think plenty of his readers pretend he is)
"The people driving the discourse have no interest in modifying their opinions and anyone who's not an acolyte is just going to disengage."
The true believers cannot be converted but they can be marginalized. Years ago the Democrats were tried of losing elections because they were viewed as too liberal so they embarked on a program of nominating moderates and, as a consequence, banished their far left wing to college campuses and out of public sight.
I can't help but wonder what will happen if Trump is re-elected next year. Will history repeat itself?
The anti-racist fixation on personal, internal beliefs feels much more like a religious act than a political one. Kendi grew up in a very religious household, and this quote of his stuck with me: "I cannot disconnect my parents' religious strivings to be Christian from my secular strivings to be an anti-racist." His perspective, which in many unproductive ways became "our" perspective for a year or more, was a simplistic morality code that others could broadcast to appear to be on the right side of history. The work was to identify the sin and shame the sinner into conformance. Which is a terrible way to create social change on the left... if only someone would write a book about this phenomenon. It might explain why so little has been accomplished these last few years
Kendi: "The heartbeat of racism is denial, and the heartbeat of antiracism is confession."
In this aphorism blacks are the priesthood
See John McWhorter's Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America (ISBN 0593423062).
Yeah, these days “check your privilege” really just means “you don’t get to speak in this conversation.”
> Imagine if I said to Stancil, “your certainty that racism/sexism/homophobia are powerful forces in the world is, at best, qualified by your limited perspective.” Do you think he’d agree? No, of course not - the truths he knows are eternal, certain, existential. And it will never occur to him that, in this, he’s just like those white men he’s critiquing.
From experience, he would probably actually say "yes", serve up some lukewarm Foucault-esque platitudes like second-rate hotdish at a potluck, point to some non-white people he's "learning from", maybe acknowledge that race is a social construct before falling back on "strategic essentialism" if he's feeling spicy, and then continue to act in a way that only makes sense if he had answered "no".
Again, it is always the same people who bring up these Ivy League terms. Checking privilege is always a talking point among people that have more privilege than they know what to do with. It's never a person who is working in a soup kitchen who sees actual suffering. Because that person knows more than anybody that talk is the cheapest currency out there.
Good piece. I like when you let it rip, Freddie.