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Posts posted by Nephil Thief
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"Political tool" is very much the point here, I think. Society skews massively one way; some people are deliberately changing the language because they want to skew it a bit the other way, so it's less horribly unfair. I don't really see a problem with that.
Edit: also IMO, that they're willing to use such political tools should be a good measure of how (rightfully) unhappy they are.
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Because I needed to start a happier, less controversial topic...
What does your home network look like?
Mine is as follows...
doomguard (gateway/firewall)
I give the "doomguard" designation to the current firewall machine. Right now it's a headless Acer Aspire 3680 - headless because the screen was damaged a few years back. It runs IPFire (x86/PAE).
flying-dutchman (laptop)
A Compaq C700 laptop, running OpenSUSE 13.2 (x64) on a 120 GB SSD. I'm still not sure if the SSD was worthwhile, though it at least makes running KDE feasible.

harvest-lore (workstation)
Custom AMD A4 workstation with 8 GB of RAM, also running OpenSUSE 13.2 x64. This is what I use for work and freelancing, experimentation of all sorts, and any VM hosting (it's the only machine in the house with hardware virtualization support).
sulfras (test backup server)
This is actually an Eee 1005HAB netbook, formerly known as grayarea; I'm using it to test some network backup software (currently BackupPC). This is working quite well, even with wimpy hardware.
thistledown (old desktop)
An archaic Powerspec 1405, single-core desktop with 1 GB of RAM and no SATA support. It still provides an okay desktop experience, with Xfce or Mate, especially if you use Linux software RAID. But I'm mainly thinking of making it the "production" backup server for the whole network; with the help of a PCI SATA controller, and some large hard drives. At that point I will probably rechristen it as time-hound.
defiant (laptop)
The only laptop that I have a Windows 7 license for. It's a ~2007 issue HP laptop, largely identical to flying-dutchman, but without the SSD. I barely ever use it.
There's also another Linux desktop, vesuvius; and a couple of nameless Windows 7 PCs.
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Oh, trivia:
* doomguard was originally a gift from my parents for college, before I went off to UMass.
* flying-dutchman and defiant were from friends who had upgraded.
* I bought sulfras a week into my first job. Not exactly money well spent...
* harvest-lore was a cheap kit from Newegg. It replaces the original, a used dual-core Dell workstation, which had suffered a spontaneous motherboard failure.
* thistledown was bought in ~2004 to replace the original, a Powerspec 1420 destroyed by a close lightning strike.
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I've never been able to see the insistence on using the word racism to apply exclusively towards systemic racism as anything but a wholly pedantic grab towards rhetorical control.
That's exactly what it is, and there's a point to that IMO. The point is focusing the attention on what is actually the relevant social problem. I mean, sure, you could have a different (and equally nasty) social order, but right now we don't.
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@Kelandon
I had a post but the board eated it... Let's try again:
a. Guilt doesn't really enter into it right now, and in any case my supposed guilt is not your business.
b. Bias != racism. Racism serves the white supremacist power structure, which Sindu is not doing in that article.
I've read people insisting that it's actually impossible for non-white people to be racist, and they get a lot of attention in doing so. It frightens me because I want to be an ally but there are too many vocal people who will shout me down if I say anything.
I've honestly given up trying to be "an ally", I'll settle for just not being a total jerk; and maybe doing the right thing on rare occasions. Fact is I'm just not a very nice person.
My advice, though, is: don't look for the position of "being an ally." That will drive you (and other people) bananas. Just try to be nice to people.
Then again, my advice should be taken with many, many grains of salt.
Re being shouted down, I'm guessing you're familiar with that feeling. Probably so are the people who might do the shouting. I don't really have much useful to say there, just the observation that there are social stresses for everyone.
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Is a culture not entitled to the sweat of its brow?
No. It belongs to everyone.
In principle I agree. In practice, this outlook is somewhat clouded by social, political, and economic power disparities... To put it very mildly indeed.
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No, it wasn't you, it was the subject in general combined with aforementioned mental and physical illness giving me hell these past several days.
Okay - I should probably have warnings when I post links to really ranty articles though.
Hope you feel better soonish.
(BTW: been there, done that. I recently wasted three or four years of my life in OCD-and-clinical-depression-land. If you want to rant, well, I'm here.)
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Tevildo: Urk.
<snip>
Ouch. Sorry. Hope I didn't trigger any anxieties.
The way I see it though, I should be listening to what these people have to say. I mean, you don't have to, that's your business; but I should. I should at least listen, even if at the end of the day I still don't agree with all of it.
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Alright, I should have searched this a while ago instead of asking whiny question. Live and learn.
http://www.blackgirl...-appropriation/
^^^ This actually makes it pretty clear which of my written universes are definitely appropriate, and which may be alright.
Likewise
http://www.blackgirl...black-art-free/
^^^ How to at least not be a total unrepentant jerk toward other people's cultures.
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I would change the Redskins name. It's not like plenty of other professional sports teams haven't changed their names, especially in the DC area (e.g. Bullets/Wizards, Expos/Nationals). That said, I do not see the Florida State Seminoles, Atlanta Braves, Kansas City Chief or Cleveland Indians as a problem, as long as the logos/mascots are done in a respectful manner, which hasn't always been the case.
How exactly does one "respectfully" use someone else's ethnic identity as a sports mascot? Especially while being a citizen of the country that tried to wipe them out? I'm trying to see your perspective on this - honest - but the "respectful" part seems pretty iffy to me.
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—Alorael, who thinks a similar quick litmus test works on a lot of things. Could what you are saying offend? Could you say it in a way that does not without losing the meaning you intend to convey? If the answers are yes and yes, you really ought to.
Err, problem there: the intended meaning is what's offensive.
Edit: especially given the context. Native American peoples were the victims of a genocide. Using that name for a sports team, and claiming there is "honor" in that, is tremendously insulting when one thinks about it.
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Therefore the intent is important. Minstrel show bad due to stereotypical intent. "White" person doing rap okay 90% of the time as long as they do not use certain language.
[bolding mine]
Funnily enough, I read an article today that was very critical of that perspective. The author's opinion was that making a big deal about intent is, by its nature, implicitly privileging the person who commits whatever offense. It's talking about the offender's feelings as the main thing, rather than the impact of their actions - i.e. in this case, the feelings of the person or people they hurt.
I mean, it's not like intent doesn't matter at all - especially the first time around, when ignorance may figure in - but when you think about it, "I didn't mean to hurt you!" doesn't make the cut in a lot of cases.
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So: a week since the OP. We've recapitulated the basics of whiteness theory, but otherwise I don't see much in terms of opinions on appropriation. Maybe just as well, I don't know. I may be looking in the wrong place.
For my part, I'm considering not making my fiction writings publicly available, anyway. I never really was interested in publishing for money - by all accounts I've read, this is a huge pain. And it's not like the world needs yet another rich white dude SF writer.
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People can be as dishonest or disrespectful as they want to be. It's fine that people sometimes want to be those things. It is not immoral to be dishonest or disrespectful when you don't hurt anyone by doing so.
Vehemently disagree. IMO the principle matters - in part because you can't always be sure you're not hurting someone.
Hurt feelings, while often persuasive(either becasue of empathy or because people hurt your feelings for doing things they don't like), do not count for moral purposes.
I think it's very much a matter of degree, and also of pervasiveness. Verbal abuse hurts. Being systematically bullied hurts. I know that from (bitter) personal experience, and what I've dealt with is relatively not even that bad.
There's a difference between being offended or mildly embarrassed, and being made to feel humiliated or outright threatened. The latter far outweighs the former. Especially when it happens on a systematic basis.
Also IMO, while individual cases of appropriation may not do much harm, case after case can function to retroactively whitewash history. See for instance the "Harlem Shake" example mentioned in the article above.
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the record labels tend to exercise a pretty heavy degree of creative control over what they produce and market, too. so yeah, being noticed by a big label isn't necessarily a triumph in terms of either material success or artistic freedom
Suddenly, the stuff I've heard on Top 20 radio stations makes a frightening amount of sense.
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I remember when rap was new. The complaints then where that "white labels" wouldn't sign rappers. Now, you are complaining that "white labels" are signing rappers and making money off of them. In 30 years, rap has gone mainstream. That should be seen as a victory, not a theft.
I'm betting the record labels make more money than the rappers, though.
(And I believe there are a lot of problems with this model of "victory," much more than just who gets the money. But I don't have the knowledge to offer commentary on it.)
what makes you so sure that the bolded claims are always true? you' date=' as an individual, may not have much effect on the degree and type of discrimination that marginalised groups experience, but culture is formed by the actions of its members. you only have to look at social processes like gentrification to see how individuals making choices that seem to only affect themselves can have a harmful effect in aggregate. if there's a sudden fad for wearing turbans and that causes an increase in prices or a shortage of supply, then that fad has harmed the people who have an actual cultural need to wear turbans. look at the quinoa shortage in South America for an example of this kind of thing happening in the real world right now: quinoa becomes a fashionable food item in the West and people who rely on it to survive are priced out of the market. no individual quinoa-eating foodie is in a position to prevent poor Bolivians from starving because half the supply of their staple food is suddenly being exported to the US, but they're still a part of the social forces that are making that happen[/quote']
Wow. That is nasty. I had no idea the health foods/nutraceuticals industry was that directly harmful.
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In my experience' date=' it's an indication of the speakers' complete disrespect and disregard for the subject and their reasoning, to the degree that [b']they don't even consider it worth their time to articulate why.[/b] Your family probably feels that way because the people demanding cultural segregation are far more self-righteous about very bad lines of reasoning than they have any right to be. Who the hell are you to tell me what I am and am not "allowed" to do?! And so forth.
[bolding mine]
And IMO that is a problem. Knee-jerk ad hominem responses may be emotionally satisfying, but they are unhelpful and alienate people.
If I, in a fit of monumentally poor judgement, want to take up wearing a turban because I saw it on the television and just like the look, that doesn't hurt anybody and policing it is a bad thing to do. That I would be treated better than a middle-eastern person doing the same is a result of preexisting oppression, not of my actions - that person would be discriminated against, in the same degree, regardless, and while it's not fair that we would be treated differently, stopping me doesn't help them and hurts, well, me. "Policing" people is generally a bad thing to do, and it's only sometimes acceptable because people hurting each other is worse. Wearing clothes, eating food, listening to music, dancing, learning a language, learning a history, all of these things can involve mimicking practices from different cultures, and they do not in general materially hurt the people comprising either one.
I agree that nobody should be policing the legal status of your turban-wearing privilege. OTOH, I don't think there's anything wrong with people telling you in such a case: "You know, that might be considered offensive." Likewise, I don't think there's anything wrong with you thinking about it, considering whether it's actually a good idea, and (eventually) rejecting the notion.
I don't like most forms of censorship, but this isn't censorship. Telling people when they're about to do something insulting is not censorship. Self-restraint is not censorship. Etc.
In general, just because you have the legal freedom to casually insult someone's culture, doesn't mean you should.
The question in my mind isn't whether the author has a point or not. They have a point. The question is more about where (approximately) one can draw a line.
also fwiw it doesn't strike me as especially weird that you'd feel a degree of personal investment in Jewish culture given how you've described your background. even if you're not actively practicing Judaism as a religion, you're connected to cultural traditions that take more than a generation or two to completely fade imo, and those are going to affect the worldview of the people you grew up with and the way you were raised
Makes sense. A lot of my worldview does seem to be informed by Jewish philosophical concepts rather than Christian ones. At least for now...
my mother had the full second-generation-immigrant experience of being bullied at school for wearing weird clothes and eating weird foods, and of growing up with parents who had fled persecution (they were Ukrainians of Jewish background who fled the USSR to Western Europe during dekulakization in the early '30s; for some mysterious reason living as Ukrainian Jews in Western Europe in the 1930s didn't turn out so great for them either, so they eventually ended up in Australia) and moved to a country where they knew nobody, where few people could speak their native language, and where they had to learn all kinds of new rules, from laws to everyday social conventions. i can't know exactly what that was like for her or for her parents but i can still feel the echoes of it in my own upbringing
I missed this earlier... Ouch.
My parents' families were fortunate to get to the US earlier - my father's side from Russia, my mom's variously from Hungary and Poland, at the beginning of the 20th century IIRC. At this point we're all pretty Americanized.
(Though, my grandmother on my father's side would be a second generation immigrant. She just turned 90. I should ask her about it, some time, if she's willing to talk... Also, thanks.)
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So yeah, possibly of note: when I mentioned this article to family yesterday, the response included an indication that people trying to police cultural appropriation can "jump off a cliff."
In my experience, when someone provokes a suggestion of self-injury or violence like that - even a sarcastic suggestion - it's often an indication that they have a point.
it's late here and i don't really have the energy to respond to the rest of this thread in detail, but: high five, my fellow vaguely Jewish poster
*high fives*
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Err... Sorry. In retrospect, I think the Chanukah music example was a terribly really bad one. I was fishing for analogies, but there aren't any - because Jewish culture has not been, well, colonized in the same way that African-American culture has.
As for the article I linked to, well - my feeling is that, seeing as I'm more closely attached to the colonizing culture, I don't get to ignore the author. Even if what they're saying annoys me at first glance.
I don't know. I'm just getting some conflicting messages, and trying to make sense of things. Hope I'm not being too pompous.
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You can't always be the hero.
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I hope this article is not too excessively political for here...
http://everydayfeminism.com/2013/09/cultural-exchange-and-cultural-appropriation/
Because I found it pretty thought-provoking.
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I'm reminded of my high school's a capella group singing Chanukah songs, back in ~2006. That kind of got under my skin. It felt like an intrusion into my territory - not sacrilege or insult, but an obnoxious blunder. Which is really kind of amusing, when you think about it; seeing as I'm only Jewish by ancestry, certainly not by religion, and barely by culture. My last visit to a synagogue was over a year ago (and I'm surprised I didn't burst into flames when I walked in).
On the other hand: my family is full of white jazz musicians. I enjoy cooking curries. I listen to all manner of music myself.
Is that not a bit inconsistent?
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I have a hard time classifying my feelings on this. Where does one draw the line between appropriation and not-really-anyone's-business? Between being respectful, and being needlessly self-limiting? Between promoting cultural equality, and promoting a kind of cultural protectionism?
For my part, I feel that if a Christian chef wants to cook latkes, that's their own business. But Christians singing Jewish holiday songs in front of a mostly Christian crowd feels like a bit much. On the other hand, why don't I feel the same way about jazz and soul food?
Like I said: inconsistent. Not good.
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More to the point, I'm a (very amateur) writer of fiction. And I feel like I'm pulled in several directions there.
On the one hand: "Appropriation is bad."
On the other: "Your default setting is politically counterprogressive."
Between those, if I want to be a reponsible writer, there's not much I could write about.
(Mind, I wouldn't mind a Christian writing about a Jewish character, culture and all; as long as they actually did the research and got things correct. But how much of a litmus test is that? Different kinds of oppression are not equivalent.)
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tl;dr
If I want to at least try to make the world a slightly better place, what are sensible best practices for navigating the seas of intersecting privilege and oppression?
(And should I even be asking that here?)
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Ouch. Phantom Unicorns are quite tough.
*digs around in pockets for a Ring of Resistance*
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... I'm like the only one anywhere near Boston, aren't I.
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Wheee! Thanks!
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Anyone know where the Unicorn Graveyard dungeon is? I've never been able to find it.

Cultural appropriation and day-to-day life
in General
Posted
Can't say I disagree. However...
You're engaging in tokenism there. Please don't do that. As you say, two wrongs don't make a right.
To be honest I don't do Twitter at all. (Colossal waste of time in my experience...) I'll take a look.
Edit: err wait, what? Who's "Dr. Gundy"? Who are you talking about?
Edit 2: actually no I won't take a look. Whoever you're talking about, she doesn't need me to declare her not-racist.