Now that's impertinent. Wonder why they picked red stars?

In the Marx Archives there are extensive writings on the Godzilla of Capitalism -- it's strangely an unexploited area of study.

He wrote about Mothra too. Deep stuff.

What if the girl were standing alongside the bull, boldly starting down the future? What would the bull mean then?

The artist holds copyright on bull, I think he spent around $300,000 of his own funds making it and I read he was trying to sell his rights to it.

Bill Maher referred to himself as a "house nigger" on his weekly HBO show yesterday. When I listened to it I thought "Ah, here's something someone will try to be unreasonably offended about".

When I woke up today the T.V in the living room was already zeroed in: "Bill Maher uses Racial slur during interview!: Here's some moral grandstanding we found in tweets from some offended black people!". "HBO ISSUES STATEMENT: Bill Maher's words were tasteless and deplorable! PLEASE DON'T HATE US". "BLM DEMANDS HBO FIRE MAHER!"...

Something about this phenomenon disturbs me beyond words and to no end, and it's happening everywhere right now; it goes like this:

- Someone does or says something that is perceived by some to be possibly offensive...

-Passionate calls for retribution immediately ensue (they start online and on the basis that someone possibly got offended)...

-Truth is exchanged for the feelings of the righteous/offended (which in the environment of emotional outrage accusations become amplified into their most extreme versions. I.E: insensitivity morphs into racism, and racism morphs into violent fascism).

In some ways these Bull shenanigans are very similar. When the bull artist took offense and started bemoaning the trampling of his artistic vision he was de-facto trying to thrust his political world view onto the NY public. Normally an artist defending their art would not amount to this in action, but because the bull is a highly public installment the executive decision should not in the end be his. If we arbitrarily bow to this artist's outrage, then we're actually giving up part of our own rights to political speech just to assuage his personal and political sensitivity.

Demanding Bill be fired because he used a term which inflicts emotional pain (but only when a white person says it...) seems just like the artist demanding the girl be removed because it offends him...

People need to learn that they've no valid moral or copyright claims over the political beliefs and speech of others which are expressed in the public free market of ideas...

That's how I feel about the girl though: What's she doing there?

The corporate style campaign that commissioned the girl was trying to promote feminism. Perhaps the bull represents the evil patriarchy, and hence the girl makes sense, but I don't think so.

Let's discuss it publicly though, and if it means that much to us let's let our public representatives and local officials know how we feel about it and what we think the monument ought to portray. If it was really that big of a deal, we could even have a series of votes to settle it!

Personally I think the girl is codswallop, but they aren't my streets so that really doesn't matter.

If the NY public likes the girl enough to keep it, power to them. The original bull artist can commit whatever the artist equivalent of hara kiri is and his outrage still wouldn't move me. I do still like his art far better alone though. If you give serious and separate appraisals of both works of art, the bull is really very impressive. The girl seems poorly sculpted by comparison...

One of my main points in this thread is that it doesn't matter about my taste though, or the bull artist's taste, or the girl's, or the pug's. If each of them thinks they have the right to install their own political views (or standards) as permanent fixtures of the public sphere, they're sorely mistaken.

BLM DEMANDS HBO FIRE MAHER!"...

Something about this phenomenon disturbs me beyond words and to no end, and it's happening everywhere right now; it goes like this:

- Someone does or says something that is perceived by some to be possibly offensive...

-Passionate calls for retribution immediately ensue (they start online and on the basis that someone possibly got offended)...

-Truth is exchanged for the feelings of the righteous/offended (which in the environment of emotional outrage accusations become amplified into their most extreme versions. I.E: insensitivity morphs into racism, and racism morphs into violent fascism). — VagabondSpectre

You got it.

x = statement valued at 1
a = multiplies statement by 10
b = multiplies a by 10
c = multiplies b by 10

1 innocuous statement ("house nigger")
a torques out and declares an offense against themselves, or worse, somebody else
b torques out and declares racist assault
c torques out and declares a fascist conspiracy

1 = 1000.

Through this multiplication process one can have nothing at all happen to them, yet claim to feel enslaved, raped, lynched, etc. A light breeze from a butterfly's wing turns into a hurricane of accusations, ending with their feeling totally vindicated that they spoke truth to power.

It's nonsensical. But then... it isn't as if that is the only non-sensical thing that happens in these times.

In addition to the city of NY liking Fearless Girl, she generated according to Bloomberg's estimates $7.4 million in free public relations for State Street Bank.

The foundry that cast Fearless Girl is very well known

I, unfortunately have not had an opportunity to visit the 'confrontation' and I think it is very difficult to judge any work of art online. However, I know that some members here live, work in NYC, and I wonder if any of them have gone over to take a look it and could respond? It would be nice to know; it is getting to that point where a trip to NYC (my hometown) is a must for me over the next couple of years. That part of NYC is great place to visit, along with the Staten Island Ferry, the Fulton Fish Market, Chinatown, Little Italy and SOHO...

That's how I feel about the girl though: What's she doing there?

The corporate style campaign that commissioned the girl was trying to promote feminism. Perhaps the bull represents the evil patriarchy, and hence the girl makes sense, but I don't think so.

Let's discuss it publicly though, and if it means that much to us let's let our public representatives and local officials know how we feel about it and what we think the monument ought to portray. If it was really that big of a deal, we could even have a series of votes to settle it! — VagabondSpectre

I don't share your perspective on the bull. It doesn't even register as art to me. It looks like something from some beer advertisement.

Life can sometimes be approached as if it's art... or as if it's a dream one is trying to decipher. You're really just trying to understand yourself, get to know yourself... that sort of thing.

I'm sure no one particularly wants to hear my blithe opinions, but I love it. I love the whole charade, right from the start with the bull. This whole serial is the sort of high-school gossip political art jargon that gets the hard left off these days, whether with rage or zealotry. The corporate sponsorship of the girl just makes it even better. Now a pissing pug. It's all pretty much meaningless. It's so self-conscious that it's eating itself like Oroboros.

However, I know that some members here live, work in NYC, and I wonder if any of them have gone over to take a look it and could respond? — Cavacava

I haven't, honestly because I don't really care that much, and I hate going to touristy areas, especially for one single piece of art, like in this case. To me, the sheer charade of something this celebrated and mainstream basically gives you what you need to know. The charade is the piece. Maybe if I went down at 3 am to take a look I might experience it in a meaningful way, but 2pm on a weekday will just be a crowded mess and not really worth experiencing.

That part of NYC is great place to visit, along with the Staten Island Ferry, the Fulton Fish Market, Chinatown, Little Italy and SOHO... — Cavacava

Little Italy and Soho have gotten pretty commercial. Chinatown will remain smelly and magical, for now at least. Lower Manhattan still retains it's charm versus the rest of the Borough, though. What part of the city is your "hometown"?

Funny you should use the term "ouroboros" (a snake eating itself)...

I've been trying to write down a coherent analysis/synopsis of the entire historical and ideological root stem and leaf of the ridiculous virtue/outrage culture that has coalesced in recent years, but it's been hard cataloging all the particulars.

The critical angle I've chosen to take is to describe the phenomenon as an ouroboros because it begins out of a desire to be virtuous and promote certain moral values (like freedom from oppression) but inexorably (through many snake like twists) it comes back and sinks it's teeth squarely into the values which originally founded it..

Here are some !!fun!! examples:

An ethics philosophy student joins an anti-fascist organisation, takes a stand against some political opponents they have labeled as fascist, and then shows up to their alleged free speech rally in a mask to attack them with a heavy steel bike lock.

A sociology student joins a race awareness group, takes a stand against perceived high levels of on campus racism, and proceeds to demand racially segregated spaces in the name of safety and equality.

A woman joins a feminist group to promote equality, is told that the wage gap is the result of patriarchal conspiracies, and proceeds to demand that we pay women even more than men in order to offset the persistent disparity between earnings.

I've been through all the academic theory (it's facile) but there's just so much activity that falls under the same causal umbrella that I'm having a hard time capturing it all.

It's nonsensical. But then... it isn't as if that is the only non-sensical thing that happens in these times. — Bitter Crank

Deep down there's a connection between precisely this kind of craziness and Trump himself.

The social justice warrior crowd has been proffering the overblown outrage angle (largely through social media, and originating in the humanities departments of university campuses) for several years and it's garnered constant ridicule and rejection from the wider internet community (although the advertisers love them).

There's a fairly tangible "anti-sjw" community that naturally resisted Hillary (and her ""i'm a woman" argument) and produced unending and effective propaganda ridiculing her, but also was somewhat resistant to some of the kinds of outrage that Trump has garnered. In some part trump is a reaction to the transparent and blatantly ridiculous virtue games that people are playing of late (Trump is the perfect troll).

It's fascinating and terrifying...

I've been trying to write down a coherent analysis/synopsis of the entire historical and ideological root stem and leaf of the ridiculous virtue/outrage culture that has coalesced in recent years, but it's been hard cataloging all the particulars. — VagabondSpectre

We seem to disagree on the fundamentals in philosophy, but I'm right with you on this (probably because I live in one of the metropolitan loci of this political stance you describe, and I don't fit in). I would be fascinated to read what you've written.

The critical angle I've chosen to take is to describe the phenomenon as an ouroboros because it begins out of a desire to be virtuous and promote certain moral values (like freedom from oppression) but inexorably (through many snake like twists) it comes back and sinks it's teeth squarely into the values which originally founded it.. — VagabondSpectre

Yup. How to communicate this to those who are caught in the cycle, though?...

Here are some !!fun!! examples: — VagabondSpectre

Are these real examples?

I've been through all the academic theory (it's facile) — VagabondSpectre

Can you elaborate?

Frank Bruni's opinion piece in today's New York Times (June 4, '17) is about your topic. He says, "But we’re never going to make the progress that we need to if they hurl the word “racist” as reflexively and indiscriminately as some of them do, in a frenzy of righteousness aimed at gagging speakers and strangling debate." then he gives some egregious examples you can add to your collection.

Are these real examples? — Noble Dust

You can't make up stuff this stupid.

The thing I dislike about on- and off-campus social justice warrior types is this: We have numerous, real, tangible, non-symbolic problems that need real, tangible, non-symbolic efforts applied to them. These problems -- economic, environmental, etc. provide real opportunities for 'enterprising' young social justice warriors to do battle. They have the disadvantage of being a bit gritty and a lot ambiguous at times. The living wage drives (pay people a minimum -living- wage, something like $15 an hour) need soldiers in the field. Work on causes like that, instead of nattering on about racism to one's fellow campus residents.

I have a few social justice warrior genes. It didn't manifest itself when I was in college. (Backwater State College in the mid 1960s just wasn't the time or place, yet.) It isn't a dominant trait, so mostly it came out in middle age in an awkward way. I'd rather not provide embarrassing details. But feeling all social justice superior is pleasant, and I'm sure our campus 'radicals' like that rush.

Yup. How to communicate this to those who are caught in the cycle, though?... — Noble Dust

It's like untying a knot; it all depends on the knot in question. You've got to understand it first.

Are these real examples? — Noble Dust

Yes they are. Here's an utterly hilarious video about the first example I gave

Can you elaborate? — Noble Dust

The central assertion of any of these social justice movements reads something like: we live in a society that systematically oppresses __________ due to widespread prejudice. By assuming this assertion to be deeply true, from this they're able to take positions like "racism is privilege plus power, which means all white people are racist", or "We must listen to the voices of the oppressed (i.e, anyone non-white or non-male) and we must expect the voices of our oppressors to be a part of the oppressive system" (meaning white males generally).

Have you ever heard someone acknowledge their white privilege and the invalidity of their opinions due to their race or gender before making their statement? Under the "identity politics" that emerges around how obsessive these people become with identity, to belong to a perceived oppressed class means you get to speak first (something called "the progressive stack" which is meant to counter-act white-male supremacy) but it also means that your "lived experiences" are inherently more valid. Anything which contradicts them therefore becomes invalid, a part of the oppressive system, and emotionally decried as supportive of violence against women/minorities.

This is where the insidiousness really gets started because logic and reason (as persuasive tools) actually get replaced with emotional appeals to the original assumption (our society as completely oppressive) and from that emotional appeals to identity and virtue as primary arguments become utterly persuasive to them. Sometimes even science itself is charged as being an inherently racist system and can therefore be brushed aside as invalid. The original assumption (and it's emotional appeal) are constantly referred back to and it just keeps on justifying more and more leaps into extreme language and perception. All members of a given group are either oppressed or oppressors under this view. Any statistical disparities must be the result of prejudice from the dominant group.

When you assume the worst and put on an ideological lens designed to magnify your existing presumptions, your own presumptions wind up being the only color you can perceive. Basically that's what's happened to them.

The above are the meat and potatoes of the social justice movement, and most of the rest is just garnish: the academic course material is literally loaded to the brim with intelligent sounding jargon and exhausting nonsensical fluff. It's all crap like "the intersection of oppression of an individual belonging to two separate but equally oppressed groups highlights the post-modern social need for complex de-colonialization in all aspects of contemporary society which currently represent the historical thread of fascist violence that has been inflicted on PoC for several centuries".

Not even joking, the above sentence might actually give them a hard-on. From here it just fans out into ridiculousness (and where it gets difficult to catalog)...

You know how academic journals/publications actually claim to have scientific standards of peer review? Well someone wrote a completely bogus research paper intentionally constituting and peppered with absolute nonsense (but written to look and sound good) in order to test the "scientific rigor" of a particular journal...

Here it is: The Conceptual Penis as a Social Construct .

The conclusion: We conclude that penises are not best understood as the male sexual organ, or as a male reproductive organ, but instead as an enacted social construct that is both damaging and problematic for society and future generations. The conceptual penis presents significant problems for gender identity and reproductive identity within social and family dynamics, is exclusionary to disenfranchised communities based upon gender or reproductive identity, is an enduring source of abuse for women and other gender-marginalized groups and individuals, is the universal performative source of rape, and is the conceptual driver behind much of climate change. An explicit isomorphic relationship exists between the conceptual penis and the most problematic themes in toxic masculinity, and that relationship is mediated by the machismo braggadocio aspect of male hypermasculine thought and performance. A change in our discourses in science, technology, policy, economics, society, and various communities is needed to protect marginalized groups, promote the advancement of women, trans, and gender-queer individuals (including non-gendered and gender-skeptical people), and to remedy environmental impacts that follow from climate change driven by capitalist and neocapitalist over-reliance on hypermasculine themes and exploitative utilization of fossil fuels.

Frank Bruni's opinion piece in today's New York Times (June 4, '17) is about your topic. He says, "But we’re never going to make the progress that we need to if they hurl the word “racist” as reflexively and indiscriminately as some of them do, in a frenzy of righteousness aimed at gagging speakers and strangling debate." then he gives some egregious examples you can add to your collection. — Bitter Crank

It's astounding how demanding that white people not show up to university for a day (to demonstrate solidarity o.o ?) is somehow done in the name of anti-racism. The way they portrayed that professor as an agent of hate is exactly the kind of turn that typifies this sort over-reaction. It's as if someone actually told these kids they ought to have an emotional breakdown in order to demonstrate against and overcome any and all conflict or opposition.

Part I

They have to rely on

crap like "the intersection of oppression of an individual belonging to two separate but equally oppressed groups highlights the post-modern social need for complex de-colonialization..." — VagabondSpectre

because the actual history of systematic oppression is not so easily simplified. For instance, SJW should know that in 2017 many blacks are economically disadvantaged because they have been systematically denied mortgages by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) rules since 1934--when the FHA program was conceived.

The FHA (established by FDR) eased the critical housing shortage and stimulated the economy in the bottom of the depression by guaranteeing mortgages to purchase homes. Without something like FHA, banks had lent money to buy housing to only the most credit worthy, but with short payback periods.

All well and good. But the FHA explicitly excluded black people from its services. Blacks were ineligible for FHA mortgages, as was any house located on a block where even 1 or 2 blacks lived. Further, FHA required covenants attached to the deed which stated that the house would not in the future be sold to blacks (and Jews, sometimes, and sometimes asians).

Everyone involved in the administration of the FHA loan program (government, banking, and real estate) pretty much agreed: black and white people should not live close-by each other. They should remain segregated. They should live in separate communities. Further, they all pretty much agreed that black people (despite the adequate incomes and savings they might have) were bad credit risks.

The average white worker who sought a loan with an FHA guarantee had no choice about the racial mix of the neighborhood he could buy into. It had to be an all white neighborhood. Period. In the future he would have no choice about the race of a buyer to whom he might sell his house. It had to be a white buyer.

The FHA loan program enabled white workers to accumulate more wealth than they could have accumulated by any other method. Over the long run, most houses appreciate in value, and a 30 year mortgage assures the home buyer of a small enough payment that they will be unlikely to default.

Had the FHA, banking system, and real estate industry not forced white and blacks into segregated housing, many blacks would have also benefitted from accumulated wealth, and many white-only neighborhoods would have been integrated from the very beginning, since a lot of FHA housing was in newly created communities.

Part II



The Second Great Migration of blacks from the south to the north began in the latter years of the Great Depression when manufacturing finally began to expand, both from modest economic recovery and from the beginning of arms manufacturing for WWII. Hundreds of thousands of black workers went north and found a still severe shortage of housing.

In Chicago only a few neighborhoods were open to blacks purchasing homes or renting. Because of the severe shortage of housing, black were willing to pay premium prices for housing, but to no avail.

A second form of discrimination in housing was organized to capitalize on black housing needs. Speculators (generally real estate operators or lawyers) bought physically distressed properties in either black or mixed neighborhoods in South and West Chicago and sold or rented them at inflated prices to black workers through a contract for deed. Substantial downpayment and higher-than-average monthly payments were required. If the buyer missed a month's payment, the seller could repossess the property and evict the buyer. The repossessed building could then be sold to somebody else.

Rental property was over-loaded with tenants. Larger apartments were subdivided by tenants (often by DIY efforts) in order to cover their high rent. Black people buying a building did the same thing -- subdivided maybe twice over, so that they could pay off the building and not miss payments, thus losing their whole investment.

Over time, this predatory system extracted a tremendous amount of wealth from the black community in Chicago (just one community among many). Mark Satter -- a bona fide Jewish Social Justice Warrior lawyer who fought to end this system of systematic exploitation in the 1950s (unsuccessfully), calculated that the large black community of Chicago was losing about a million dollars a day through this property predation.

In the meantime, white home owners were accumulating value in their houses. They were not becoming rich, they were only gaining a margin of security. It was generally their only asset. Their future security depending on its preservation. They worried intensely about blacks moving into their neighborhood, because they had been assured many times (it was in their loan agreement) that they could not sell to blacks, and if their property value dropped (as a result of blacks moving in) then they would lose whatever value they had accumulated.

Banks, real estate agents, and the FHA itself wanted to make sure home values didn't drop. Again, local real estate agents provided a workforce for maintaining segregation. They made it clear to white home owners that selling to blacks would be a personal economic disaster for them. Real estate agents were in a position to make value drop by stampeding white people out of a neighborhood. "Sell right now! The niggers are coming, and your property value will fall into the basement." So, people did sell, and moved to more distant, more secure suburbs.

Were blacks actually a threat to property value?

Yes and no. No, in that they were often willing and able to pay a premium to get housing at all, and decent housing even more. (Many of the southern black people in Chicago were hard working and thrifty.)

Yes, in that the housing density in black neighborhoods was extremely high, and the housing stock (mostly owned by absentee landlords--slum lords, quite often) were poorly maintained. High density and a lack of maintenance is a bad combination for any demographic group. The black neighborhoods became physically degraded.

Crime existed in the white neighborhoods before the presence of blacks could be a significant consideration (say, 1935). People produce their own anti-social elements who then engage in the usual sort of crime -- burglary, theft, knifings, vandalism, public drunkenness, disorderly behavior, a quite rare killing or two, and so on.

Why did the black neighborhoods produced much more crime?

Several factors. A major factor in crime generation is parental supervision. Because of the unusually high cost of housing in black neighborhoods, both parents needed to work at least 1 job to produce enough income to make ends meet. Because the parents were working, the children were unsupervised after school. Unsupervised children generally get into trouble of one kind or another whatever their race or socio-economic background.

Chicago's public schools could not handle the very high census of students in a small area that segregation caused. The schools went to two shifts --AM and PM. The quality of education provided was thus degraded, and children were left unsupervised not for an hour or two after school, but all morning or all afternoon (in families where both parents worked).

Many blacks were unable to achieve economic stability and ended up on welfare -- then the Aid For Dependent Children program (AFDC) which excluded males from benefits, pretty much. AFDC was support at a poverty level.

So, the black community deteriorated, crime became worse (we haven't reached the 1970s, yet), education was inadequate, social services was inadequate, and so on. Bad.

None of this was the result of racism on the part of the white workers who bought houses on the FHA program. They didn't keep blacks from doing the same thing. It was governmental, banking, and real estate sales institutions that instituted and enforced the rigid segregation. Of course, there was a certain amount of native racism among white working people -- much of it probably xenophobia as much as racism. But official policy bolstered, aggravated, and shaped native racism or xenophobia as a part of its segregation objectives.

I am quite interested in a genuine historical analysis of systemic oppression (and I hope you've got part 3 coming!), but the distilled jargon of post-modern SJW-ism sweeps all such details into the same dust bin as a broad and ill-defined justification for their extreme demands in contemporary society.

I do understand many aspects of the legacy of racism (and slavery too) as it affects black demographics, but these SJW types don't get the difference between, say, the inter-generational effects of past racism, and the on-going contemporary forces which might be perpetuating the statistical inequalities they aim to affect. Half of them are demanding broad reparations be paid (from all whites to all blacks) for slavery. That's how large some of their leaps actually are.

I do hope you've got a part three coming though :) . In the (now mostly) desegregated west, post civil rights movements, and post overt racism as a social norm, inter-generational poverty yet persists (for whites too perhaps at the same rates (perhaps as a function of declining racism)).

these SJW types don't get the difference between, say, the inter-generational effects of past racism, and the on-going contemporary forces which might be perpetuating the statistical inequalities they aim to affect. — VagabondSpectre

Well, as university students they are likely to be quite young and from fairly comfortable, largely segregated white backgrounds. I'm guessing that the problems of poverty and raw racism are something they've learned about through books, speeches, and TV programs, and not face to face experience. Black youth that sound as sophisticated as some of these young university blacks do didn't grow up in the ghetto, either.

Because they are young and live unexamined lives they probably can't account for their own quirks, let alone other people's. This isn't unique to the current crop of SJWs.

Once they get out of college (if they ever do) and get jobs and live in far less rarified precincts than campus dorms, they'll eventually get this naiveté ground off by abrasion.

The greatest misfortune for these young volk would be to sound like they do now--for the rest of their lives.

It's more that they are picking about a significance that's the same across both intergenerational and contemporary forces: that a society is formed in which black people are on a lower social rung. Rather than a question of any particular cause(e.g. poverty, people intentionally excluding them, etc.), it a description about the status of a group within society. The point is not about any particular casual problem, but rather recognising someone is disadvantaged.

In many ways, it's similar to Marxist analysis of economic interactions. Just because someone has a job and is being paid, it doesn't mean an absence of disadvantage or power. Or just because a person chooses to commit crimes as answer economic problems, it doesn't mean they are not subject to capitalist oppression.

Or in other words:

All members of a given group are either oppressed or oppressors under this view. Any statistical disparities must be the result of prejudice from the dominant group. — VagabondSpectre

It is the very presence disparity which amounts to "oppression" and the presence of a "dominant group." Neither are second order events caused by prejudice. They are the significance of the system/action/ prejudice itself.

I understand the idea that people are exploited and suppressed because the economy is organized as a system for exploiting and suppressing people. This applies to most people under capitalism: the workers are meant to be exploited, and most people are workers (that is, they depend on a wage whether they lecture in philosophy or dig ditches).

The idea of encouraging home ownership during the depression wasn't entirely benevolent. The people who did the thinking for the rich and powerful understood that renting wage earners without families were loose cannons. They could afford to blow up the system. Load them down with a mortgage and family and they would be afraid to blow up the system, since they now had a piece of it to which they were firmly riveted.

Home ownership did pacify the masses to some degree.

That blacks were left out of this system wasn't because they were trusted to stay meek. "They" didn't want blacks and whites on friendly terms or (they didn't say this at the FHA) sexual terms. Poverty and exclusion were the lot of blacks. Then, and later (like, now) there were police and prisons to control blacks. Poverty, police, and prisons.

IF all this is true, we can't then blame white people for being racist and oppressing black people. The oppressors are the scheming rich folk, who can oppress because they are rich. White folk were separated out from blacks early in the game and the two groups were subjected to separate exploitation systems, and they still are.

Prejudice is the affective result of concrete oppression.

Well said.

It's not a question of "blame" though, in the sense that any individual person caused it, but rather one of recognition that all these systematic elements not only constitute "concrete" oppression in racial terms (what's the material difference between pushing black people into their own improvised community, away from opportunities, etc. and just excluding them by law? ) which is ignored in how our society is generally understood.

We can certainly "blame" the system, the symbolic understanding of white people in relation to society and the white people who ignore these issues when thinking about society for not recognising the issues. When someone, for example, dismisses police action as just cops taking on criminals, they ignore this significance about society.

They dismiss the oppression which is occurring just to say there is no problem with relation to our social systems and how black people are affected. It doesn't allow us to register its not just those who want to lynch black people which constitute inequality, but a system which doesn't recognise how it is excluding a particular group in, blindly doing it again and again (e.g. denying black people home ownership, quasi segregation by shutting them out of affluent communities, etc.).

This is a key concern of BLM: a shift away from an understanding of society which just assumes it's not harming back people, which excuses the inequality of black communities as something that somehow defined separately to the systems of our society, to one that views how the are affected within the system of our society.

This is a key concern of BLM: a shift away from an understanding of society which just assumes it's not harming back people, which excuses the inequality of black communities as something that somehow defined separately to the systems of our society, to one that views how the are affected within the system of our society. — TheWillowOfDarkness

These days our society harms people of all colors, and the only signal for reprieve is the color green (money).

You wish me to conform to your language use and assent to the position that the very existence of a statistical disparity represents systemic oppression, but I just cannot do it. You've got to explain how systemic oppression is actually keeping black families down in the contemporary world.

What if the many and major factors keeping poor families poor applies to all races (keeping white families poor too)? If we try to fix statistical disparities but presume the causal factors must pertain to race, we risk missing the genuine causative factors entirely.

Racism means prejudice based on race. It doesn't mean power plus privilege, nor does it mean systemic oppression evidenced by statistical inequalities.

these young volk — Bitter Crank

Heh...They just want a bit of lebensraum safetys-raum!

In my experience 15-25 years of age seems to always be the target demographic of extreme ideology, but as they start to age out of their fanaticism, the question I have is whether or not there will be further batches as new university students haphazardly stumble in to certain humanities courses.

The press worm seems to be slowly turning against the SJW crowd, so I'm hopeful students will vote with their wallets and force campus reform by abandoning gender studies en mass...

Systemic oppression isn't about what's "keeping someone down." It's about how a particular group of people is "down" in society, a description boat a relationships of a society to people, an account of our society which starts a a beginning point to approach cases in relation to issues which affect particular people.

The point is not how any particular black family is kept down (in each case, there would be one and a thousand different events which cause that outcome), it's *that the are*, a beginning point which allows us to grasp particular issues and aspects about our society, which we would otherwise miss if were only to talk about some other issue.

So no, I don't need to explain "how" systematic oppression keeps anyone down. You're merely delivering a category error and strawman, confusing a description of our society in relationship to a particular group of people for a casual event or action.

What if the many and major factors keeping poor families poor applies to all races (keeping white families poor too)? If we try to fix statistical disparities but presume the causal factors must pertain to race, we risk missing the genuine causative factors entirely. — VagabondSpectre

Many of the factors keeping families poor apply to all races (e.g. cycles of poverty, poor economic conditions, etc.) and are keeping white families down too. No-one's presuming the causative factor pertains to race. They are describing that a particular race is affected in a way another is not (an analysis of groups rather than individuals).

When people shout out: "Bring down the white supremacy," they aren't talking about a causative factor, but rather calling for an end to a society in which black people are on a lower rung, whatever the cases might be. It saying: "It's important to, in a descriptive sense, recognise racial inequalities that exist in our society (rather than just dismissing them), so they register to us when we are considering how we build and run society.

We risk missing genuine causative factors if we don't do this, for we will consider our social system as separate what amounts to racial inequality-- e.g. we will just say "the US police and justice system are just fighting criminals," rather than recognise particular policies, especially regarding sentencing, play a large role in how black communities are affected and rail inequality.