In other words, I think you'd now be endowing an entire group of people with too much agency (rather than the regular canard of doing so toward individuals: e.g., telling black people to just behave more responsibly and keep their kids in school longer or not abandoning their children, etc.).

I'm for people trying their best to understand history as accurately as possible. The more people just try to face up to the reality of it, the better we can understand the present. Also helps us understand how to move forward.

I totally disagree that there's anything in our current culture wars that provides any kind of insight into how we move forward beyond: it's ok, because white people are going to die off, and demographics are on the side of the democratic party. That, and Ta-Nehisi Coates arguing for reparations, but even he's as guilty as anyone else of describing race being an permanent and irremovable stain on American society that will never go away. Most identity politics seems to be about doubling down on the idea that politics more than anything else is defined by zero-sum conflict, such that white people dying from opioids is literally the vision for how to move forward.

Accurately judging history doesn't mean we never move past anything, it just means accurately understanding things. That doesn't really feed into culture wars stuff, so I'm not sure why you mention it.

I'm for people trying their best to understand history as accurately as possible. The more people just try to face up to the reality of it, the better we can understand the present. Also helps us understand how to move forward.

Uh, because I assumed when you responded to me with this:

that you were responding to what I had written when you responded, which was about the culture wars. Perhaps you weren't.

In context it is relevant. By accurately assessing history, Ben Shapiro couldn't make some of the statements he does. This would also apply to the left, as well. Better history = less bad interpretations of history.

So like, it's relevant but not a partisan statement.

I totally disagree that there's anything in our current culture wars that provides any kind of insight into how we move forward beyond: it's ok, because white people are going to die off, and demographics are on the side of the democratic party. That, and Ta-Nehisi Coates arguing for reparations, but even he's as guilty as anyone else of describing race being an permanent and irremovable stain on American society that will never go away. Most identity politics seems to be about doubling down on the idea that politics more than anything else is defined by zero-sum conflict, such that white people dying from opioids is literally the vision for how to move forward.

In December 2017, the philosopher and activist Cornel West published an editorial in The Guardian with the title: "Ta-Nehisi Coates is the neoliberal face of the black freedom struggle".[33] The premise of the article was that Coates "fetishizes white supremacy" and, in West's view, represents "narrow racial tribalism and myopic political neo-liberalism" by wrongly casting former President Barack Obama as a successor to such figures as Malcolm X as an African-American hero.[33] West believes that Obama (whom on a previous occasion he had called a "Rockefeller Republican in blackface")[34] should never be compared to activists, such as Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr., who in their fight against white supremacy spoke out against systemic biases in predatory capitalism and war; according to West, this is because Obama, while he is of the same racial class, is part of the system that the activists should fight against.[33] The same day, West shared the article on Twitter, attracting tweets in response from many others, including hundreds of supporters of Coates.[35][36] The next day, West's tweet was retweeted by the alt-right white supremacist, Richard Spencer, who indicated tacit agreement with West's criticism of Coates.[35][37] Shortly afterwards, Coates, who had enjoyed a following of over 1.25 million other Twitter users, deactivated his Twitter account.[35][38][39]

Yeah, agreed. A lot of problems in the culture war are only possible because Americans have a complete lack of historical consciousness.

NYT has lots of great people, like Paul Krugman. She ain't one of them tho, lol.

If I am not scared to do this in China, I am not going to be scared of some Brooklyn hipsters...

Relevant subject, can someone please explain to me why American journalists talk about China like it's a normal country? The penalty for being a feminist woman in China is getting parted out like a car.

Can someone tl:dr the Sarah Jeong thing, it keeps coming up but I can't find the motivation to read stuff about it.

I dated a Chinese girl for a while, long enough to know her parents a bit, and came away believing that Chinese culture is incredibly sexist. Western media doesn't cover it because white people don't give a ****.

(And a more thoughtful one by David French)

Jeong’s tweets, in context, clearly fit this type of rhetoric. When she writes “dumbass ****ing white people marking up the internet with their opinions like dogs pissing on fire hydrants,” she is not, as Sullivan accuses her of doing, “equat[ing whites] with animals.” Rather, she is commenting on the ubiquity of (often uniformed) white opinion on social media — a way of pointing out how nonwhite voices often don’t appear or get drowned out in social media discourse.

There is something outrageous about the left's justification of these tweets. I read a few opinion pieces on this from the left responding to the right's criticisms, and many of them argue, "it's not that we have a double standard. It's that... well, yes, we have a double standard, but it's morally justified!" That's actually kind of understandable. What's really outrageous, though, is when they go through tweet by tweet and try to "contextualize" them. It's kind of difficult to imagine that it convinces anyone. Like this one:

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/8/3/17648566/sarah-jeong-new-york-times-twitter-andrew-sullivan

uh, k?

For once, I'd like to see someone defend her by saying that what she did was bad, but we should forgive her. Forgiveness never seems like an option in these debates, but it seems like the way out of this whole cultural mess we're in: restoring the possibility of forgiveness and absolution.

Some of it (idk about her, just in general) really can be just trolling. Part of it is a reaction against alt-right, Trumpy people online obsessing about "white genocide". People began joking about being excited for the "mayocide" whenever they wanted to pick on a white person.

You also have comments like these:



Which is clearly not actually saying "I hate white people". It's saying "white people can be overly sensitive". Of course, a bunch of white people got upset by it. And onward goes the cycle of baiting people getting really mad because someone prodded their identity. I really think a bunch of that kind of posting is intentionally trying to bait stupid people into getting outraged and isn't genuine. Of course, it's hard to determine any one individual's intent, and there's probably some gray area here, but for the sake of everybody's sanity it's the better assumption.

I haven't read her tweets but from what you've both said, it sounds like what she says goes past that. Sometimes those people really just want to make some ****ty or racist comments about white people and try to blur the line between sarcastic humor and honest opinion.

I see the New York Times letting her off the hook much akin to Hollywood movie stars getting an easy sentence for drunk driving. Yes, in both cases they knew it was wrong when they did it, but that doesn't exactly endear them to the public when it finds out how elite society's fortunate sons and daughters get off the hook so easily compared to the rest of us.

Black people are totally overly sensitive about race. Have you ever noticed that? And don't get me started on the Jews.


DON'T WORRY, I WAS BEING SATIRICAL!

It's really kind of amazing that so much of the perception (and perhaps the fact) of institutional failure in the US can be attributed to the failure of political elites in the Bush administration to even acknowledge that they made mistakes, never mind to be held accountable and punished for them.

It's almost as if what's really going on here is that problem isn't government, as much as the upper-middle class (disproportionately represented in government and in elite institutions) trying desperately to built a moat around itself to consolidate and protect its advantages by using the exact same tactics.

Ironically, then, it's this Sara Jeong person who is exhibiting some of the most privilege of all here.

this kind of reaction is exactly what they're talking about, lol. it would be hard to bait you into giving a reply this emotional if it was anything else.

What's news to me is that 'trolling' is anything but the lamest of excuses for spreading racist content. My understanding was always that due to the nature of online media, regardless of your intent, propagating hateful statements is (almost, see below) always irresponsible at best, because it's literally impossible for people to know what you "really" mean by them, all the while precipitating whatever kind of effect you all too well should have known they would create.

It's a different story of the posts are obvious satire. But that has to be made clear at the time, not two years later by an echo chamber of left wing bloggers.