Sebelius for VP, not Hillary

Hey, it's cool, Ceci. You know, from what I can see, I think that you and your friend (forgot his name) have some really intelligent things to say. It's just that it's just a bad policy to create an environment where the other guy has to be destroyed in order for one to get one's point across. You and your friend remind me very much of how I used to be: having something intelligent to say, but in retrospect a bit too aggressive in the personal attacks department.

Well, I'm glad we're all cool now.


WEB

emptypepsi

That's like saying legalizing marijuana and giving people the choice to do it means that the decision is rooted in a "want" to do drugs. It's not. It's about giving people the choice. It's about freedom. If drug use happens to take place, then it will. If people get educated on the harmful effects of the drug and society is not regulated internally by educating one another, it will become widespread - sure. But that is one of the risks you take with a free-thinking society.

Just as individualism does not guarantee or automatically equal selfishness. It leaves room for it, as a choice, but emphasizes the room to make the decision. It is up to the society, the free-thinking society, to educate each other and stick up for one another while maintaining responsibility for themselves in any action. If one person screws up, it is not the fault of his co-workers and they will not bear the blame. He will bear the blame. If it was a selfish mindset, he would drag others with him for his mistake. That is being selfish. To be selfless, to want nothing but to accept the naturaly occuring responsibility for your own action - that is to truly be an individual.

__________________
"The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom."
Isaac Asimov

Ygorl

Yes, you WOULD be puzzled.

Puzzled because I haven't "repeated" anything.

Yes, I know. Play the game. I'm not willing to engage you in it.

Off you go now. I do hope you recover from your puzzled condition.

emptypepsi

Very well said. I didn't know that about you, BTW. I can relate to what you're saying.

I'm half latino, and it's easy to confuse which ethnicity I am (usually not, though, as I have plenty of Spanish-speaking folks approach me in Spanish first, not English). However, I've been called a traitor as well by numerous Latino-Americans (WRT my outlook on illegal immigration, hispanic culture in the urban areas, integration issues). It's just as ridiculous to say such things as it is to be racist. To think that one must "think" a certain way because of their skin complexion...that's backwards...just as backwards as racism.

You're also very right in the sense that nothing is going to change overnight. U.S. history shows us this time and time again. I think it is infact rooted in our history to oppose radical change. Look at how we were formed. We had been the product of benign neglect by the British, no interference in our lives, until they gave us new taxes, more troops on the mainland - it went from one pole to the next in a small amount of time. That is why you got a radical rebellion against their ideals and their prescence here. That is why today, when you try and push radical change with suppression or any other means in a short amount of time, you usually get the opposite reaction of your intent.

__________________
"The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom."
Isaac Asimov

emptypepsi

@ Ceci - Just a note, we don't disagree on community importance. I think the lack of inter-cultural connections, most recently, are what make the situation for immigrants very hard. People move away as soon as immigrants arrive, afraid of what problems they may bring from 'scary' parts of the world. It is for this that many have a hard time assimilating into American culture, while being bombarded with comments like "Immigrants aren't assimilating". They are being put into a situation where they are given no choice but to be isolated, in some instances that is.

I just think you underestimate and are being overly critical of individualism as a personal philosophy.

__________________
"The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom."
Isaac Asimov

Ceci

I don't want to stray too far off-topic, but that's a libertarian mindset. A libertarian mind-set espouses for individual freedom and responsibility.

With that being said, I agree with what you are saying. Where we disagree is the fact that freedom is not only contingent on what the individual does.

I think that responsibility stems from the individual to care about another as well. If he or she chooses not to care or identify with another individual, then it is selfish. And if someone cannot identify with others it is contigent with narcissism and self-objectification.

You're right. But individuals also have a choice to react in ways that stigmaticize and defame another group of people based on influences from culture, heritage, social values and norms. One simply cannot be solely an individual in a larger society. They have to acknowledge that they are influenced by the thinking of others. And that means for a lot of people, subscribing to dominant ideals. It is also his or her choice to give up their heritage in order to cater to the dominant group in order to survive in the system. For some, that is self-less. For others, it means that the said person has a poor self-image of his or her own heritiage and culture in terms of its inferiority while subscribing to the superiority of the dominant group.

But if individualism is over-emphasized, how is this going to happen? If people think in terms of themselves, where is the room to care about others? You see, it's not as easy as it sounds. There are shades of grey here, but unfortunately when the emphasis is on the individual without collective responsibility for the larger culture, then what happens is narcissism on this account as well. One is so caught up with one's own needs that they don't have the space to think about the condition of other people.

That's not what I mean. I meant that when people are interconnected with one another, they see what others are doing and work together to find solutions. Of course, there is individual responsibility involved when wrong doing happens.

But in the case of Cho Seung-Hui, this argument is especially appropro when not only the Asian community had to come to grips with what he did; but also how they treated the aspect of Mr. Cho being the shooter. They had to look long and hard at their own identity, deal with it in terms of the dominant culture and work with it.


Who said that one won't--if one is part of a sub-group dominated by the larger group's ideals. Because of the constant superiority emphasized on the dominant group, don't you think that the incident would generate more inferiority on the subgroup? Not only that it would serve to re-emphasize why dominant ideals are better. For individuals operating within the dominant group, it's an easy individual choice to think that one is better than others. And for members of the sub-group who strive to be accepted by the dominant group, it is an easy individual choice to put your own attributes aside to bask in that superiority and even transmit the ideals of the dominant group as well.

Individualism isn't as solitary as you make it out to be. There are always group-interests involved--especially when it has to do with identity.


That is the dominant way of thinking about it. There are other cultural attitudes to responsibility that still need to be researched and discovered. And because of that, one must recognize that dominant cultural thinking isn't always the only way to deal with issues of responsibility--whether it has to do with the individual or the group.

__________________
Ceci's News and Views Forum

Bozo

White People's Burden

By Robert Jensen, AlterNet. Posted August 31, 2005.

The United States is a white country. By that I don't just mean that the majority of its citizens are white, though they are (for now but not forever). What makes the United States white is not the fact that most Americans are white but the assumption -- especially by people with power -- that American equals white. Those people don't say it outright. It comes out in subtle ways. Or, sometimes, in ways not so subtle.

Here's an example: I'm in line at a store, unavoidably eavesdropping on two white men in front of me, as one tells the other about a construction job he was on. He says: "There was this guy and three Mexicans standing next to the truck." From other things he said, it was clear that "this guy" was Anglo, white, American. It also was clear from the conversation that this man had not spoken to the "three Mexicans" and had no way of knowing whether they were Mexicans or U.S. citizens of Mexican heritage.

It didn't matter. The "guy" was the default setting for American: Anglo, white. The "three Mexicans" were not Anglo, not white, and therefore not American. It wasn't "four guys standing by a truck." It was "a guy and three Mexicans." The race and/or ethnicity of the four men were irrelevant to the story he was telling. But the storyteller had to mark it. It was important that "the guy" not be confused with "the three Mexicans."

Here's another example, from the Rose Garden. At a 2004 news conference outside the White House, President George W. Bush explained that he believed democracy would come to Iraq over time:


"There's a lot of people in the world who don't believe that people whose skin color may not be the same as ours can be free and self-govern. I reject that. I reject that strongly. I believe that people who practice the Muslim faith can self-govern. I believe that people whose skins aren't necessarily -- are a different color than white can self-govern."


It appears the president intended the phrase "people whose skin color may not be the same as ours" to mean people who are not from the United States. That skin color he refers to that is "ours," he makes it clear, is white. Those people not from the United States are "a different color than white." So, white is the skin color of the United States. That means those whose skin is not white but are citizens of the United States are ...? What are they? Are they members in good standing in the nation, even if "their skin color may not be the same as ours"?
This is not simply making fun of a president who sometimes mangles the English language. This time he didn't misspeak, and there's nothing funny about it. He did seem to get confused when he moved from talking about skin color to religion (does he think there are no white Muslims?), but it seems clear that he intended to say that brown people -- Iraqis, Arabs, Muslims, people from the Middle East, whatever the category in his mind -- can govern themselves, even though they don't look like us. And "us" is clearly white. In making this magnanimous proclamation of faith in the capacities of people in other parts of the world, in proclaiming his belief in their ability to govern themselves, he made one thing clear: The United States is white. Or, more specifically, being a real "American" is being white. So, what do we do with citizens of the United States who aren't white?
That's the question for which this country has never quite found an answer: What do white "Americans" do with those who share the country but aren't white? What do we do with peoples we once tried to exterminate? People we once enslaved? People we imported for labor and used like animals to build railroads? People we still systematically exploit as low-wage labor? All those people -- indigenous, African, Asian, Latino -- can obtain the legal rights of citizenship. That's a significant political achievement in some respects, and that popular movements that forced the powerful to give people those rights give us the most inspiring stories in U.S. history.
The degree to which many white people in one generation dramatically shifted their worldview to see people they once considered to be subhuman as political equals is not trivial, no matter how deep the problems of white supremacy we still live with.In many comparable societies, problems of racism are as ugly, if not uglier, than in the United States. If you doubt that, ask a Turk what it is like to live in Germany, an Algerian what it's like to live in France, a black person what it's like to live in Japan. We can acknowledge the gains made in the United States -- always understanding those gains came because non-white people, with some white allies, forced society to change -- while still acknowledging the severity of the problem that remains.
But it doesn't answer the question: What do white "Americans" do with those who share the country but aren't white?
We can pretend that we have reached "the end of racism" and continue to ignore the question. But that's just plain stupid. We can acknowledge that racism still exists and celebrate diversity, but avoid the political, economic, and social consequences of white supremacy. But, frankly, that's just as stupid. The fact is that most of the white population of the United States has never really known what to do with those who aren't white. Let me suggest a different approach.
Let's go back to the question that W.E.B. Du Bois said he knew was on the minds of white people. In the opening of his 1903 classic, The Souls of Black Folk, Du Bois wrote that the real question whites wanted to ask him, but were afraid to, was: "How does it feel to be a problem?" Du Bois was identifying a burden that blacks carried -- being seen by the dominant society not as people but as a problem people, as a people who posed a problem for the rest of society. Du Bois was right to identify "the color line" as the problem of the 20th century. Now, in the 21st century, it is time for whites to self-consciously reverse the direction of that question at heart of color. It's time for white people to fully acknowledge that in the racial arena, we are the problem. We have to ask ourselves: How does it feel to be the problem?
The simple answer: Not very good.
That is the new White People's Burden, to understand that we are the problem, come to terms with what that really means, and act based on that understanding. Our burden is to do something that doesn't seem to come natural to people in positions of unearned power and privilege: Look in the mirror honestly and concede that we live in an unjust society and have no right to some of what we have. We should not affirm ourselves. We should negate our whiteness. Strip ourselves of the illusion that we are special because we are white. Steel ourselves so that we can walk in the world fully conscious and try to see what is usually invisible to us white people. We should learn to ask ourselves, "How does it feel to be the problem?"
alternet.org/rights/24745/

Ceci

Isolation doesn't always happen on the immigrants' part. People from other socialized groups also make the individual choice to isolate newcomers to America as well. The individual choice of Americans who participate in this type of denigrating action must be accounted for as well. There's two sides to every story.

Not really. I just think that individualism is not all that its cracked up to be--especially when it has been peddled as a form of attack against culturalized interests outside of dominant thinking.

--------------------------------------------------------------------


Note to Listener: I have something later to say about what you've posted. Thank you for bringing up Robert Jensen.

__________________
Ceci's News and Views Forum

emptypepsi

On my libertarian sounding reply: It might have to do with my five year enrollment in the Libertarian party, void as of 2006. : ) However, I still hold strong Libertarian tendencies.

On the VT shooter and Asian community: I don't think the VT shooter had anything to do with Asian culture. I think it actually had to do with another problem in American society - sterilizing minds and not dealing with failure/frustration. This issue is not culturally Oriental - it's a primarily American response to not being prepared for frustration. I'm actually starting a thread on that tommorow. : )

On immigrants: what you said is what I was trying to say, I guess it got misconstrued. It is the citizens fault here. That is one aspect of Immigration I do not lie at immigrants feet. It's the citizens here, for the most part, that perpetuate this problem while all the while griping about them not getting integrated. There's no effort being put forth.

With it now decided that you want individualism emphasized less, and community responses emphasized more, how do you think that community approaches will help the white community? Where should we begin? How should this be implemented without empty government legislation?

__________________
"The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom."
Isaac Asimov

Sebelius for VP, not Hillary

It's a shame that Scribbler dropped his banner. I will pick it up for him though.

You do not want to start saying "white people this, white people that." Maybe, there is some truth to it. Maybe white people might want to be saying that to each other. However, to be really nitty gritty about it and totally scientific and precise, I would say that you cannot say "white people X "(insert belief or action).

I think that the intentions of a white person who says "white people X" might be good, or they might be the perspective of a foreigner who just doesn't know better, or both. However, white people come in all colors. No, I don't mean Italians and Germans and WASPs. I mean you've got bleeding heart liberal whites, moderate whites, progressive whites, racist whites, whites who are ignorant of people of color, etc.

There may be some or many whites who don't know black or Latino people exist (except perhaps that they clean up the lawn). But there are also those who are very serious about healing this countries race gap. Please bear that in mind as well.


WEB