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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   36584 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 24, 2022

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As the old saying goes, you get used to anything eventually.

Getting used to literally being brutalized every time you try to rebel or run (and people did try) is not the same as getting used to...I dunno, whatever "slave" situation Kanye feels he and black people are today.

Sure, you could say they got used to both* but the means by which they were made resigned to their fate are vastly different and it's important.

If I look at the situation and think: "I hate the white man, I want to escape but I know so-and-so got lynched and that last rebellion was crushed brutally" that imo that is not some mental distortion or spell. That is a response to force, not a Jedi mind trick.

You might as well say that a conquered state is "mentally" enslaved.

That is the mental slavery. And yes it absolutely continues to this day, and yes you are one of the slaves, so am I, so is everyone here. But we have never been free - truly free - and so we accept this crude facsimile we are given by the government and corporations and all those who profit from our misery.

Sorry, but to me, this falls into the "if it's true it's true in a banal sense". Lots of people are forced into suboptimal political situations. It's not inherently slavery, especially not slavery compared to actual slavery. This is why OP's original steelman assumed that Kanye meant it was like slavery, not that he actually made an equivalence between slaves and black people today. Because it would be ridiculous.

Creating an equivalence between black people who were literally brought to America in chains and black people today seems absurd to me. I find the mindset ludicrous and it leads to all sorts of weird nonsense like Kaepernick comparing the NFL to slavery

Is Kaepernick right? I mean...I guess he is correct that there is a power differential between owners and players. And players naturally are subject to health checks to make sure they are fit to play and they are "sold" but I don't think anyone actually thinks it's anything like slavery and, the sense in which it is like that is so nebulous..

You might as well say that a conquered state is "mentally" enslaved.

People do say that. This is a common refrain among nationalists, and apparently enough motivation for them to put their lives on the line in rebellion.

You might as well say that a conquered state is "mentally" enslaved.

They are. A conquered state is mentally enslaved, else they cannot be conquered. To crack open one of my favorite passages of Herodotus for the second time this week, Herodotus's account of the Xanthians:

The Pedasian stronghold being at length taken, and Harpagus having led his army into the plain of Xanthus, the Lycians came out to meet him, and did valorous deeds in their battle against odds; but being worsted and driven into the city they gathered into the citadel their wives and children and goods and servants, and then set the whole citadel on fire. Then they swore each other great oaths, and sallying out they fell fighting, all the men of Xanthus. Of the Xanthians who claim now to be Lycians the greater number — all saving eighty households — are liars.

Or ask Hasdrubal's wife at the fall of Carthage what slavery means.

Or ask Gandhi when consulted on what the Brits and the Jews should do about the Nazis:

"I would like you to lay down the arms you have as being useless for saving you or humanity. You will invite Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini to take what they want of the countries you call your possessions... If these gentlemen choose to occupy your homes, you will vacate them. If they do not give you free passage out, you will allow yourselves, man, woman, and child, to be slaughtered, but you will refuse to owe allegiance to them."

“Hitler killed five million [sic] Jews. It is the greatest crime of our time. But the Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher’s knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs.....It would have aroused the world and the people of Germany.... As it is they succumbed anyway in their millions.”

There are alternatives to victory or accepting defeat and slavery.

Getting used to literally being brutalized every time you try to rebel or run (and people did try) is not the same as getting used to...I dunno, whatever "slave" situation Kanye feels he and black people are today.

I don't think Kanye is talking about just black people, although I think it's truer of them than most. He's saying the same thing black conservatives have been saying for decades, that blame whitey, blame slavery, blame whatever you like, the real thing holding down black people today is a culture of apathy which tells them living on the edge of poverty is as good as they can get. That it doesn't matter that you live in the ghetto if you have a gaudy platinum chain on your neck. That sure, your daughter is going to end up raising the baby she just learned about alone, because her boyfriend is going to get himself arrested or shot, but you made do in that situation and so will she.

Sure, you could say they got used to both* but the means by which they were made resigned to their fate are vastly different and it's important.

To whom? Do you think it's unimportant to a guy whose ancestors experienced it? Do you think he said it flippantly? I think if he said it the same way black conservatives usually say it it would have been ignored like it usually is.

If I look at the situation and think: "I hate the white man, I want to escape but I know so-and-so got lynched and that last rebellion was crushed brutally" that imo that is not some mental distortion or spell. That is a response to force, not a Jedi mind trick.

It is a response to force, but it is also a jedi mind trick. Black people on some plantations outnumbered whites. But they were kept in line anyway. Not with brutality, with the white man's greatest tool - decorum. As I said, slaves who believed that was where they belonged. That is mental slavery. Slave morality if you like.

He's saying the same thing black conservatives have been saying for decades, that blame whitey, blame slavery, blame whatever you like, the real thing holding down black people today is a culture of apathy which tells them living on the edge of poverty is as good as they can get.

And I don't have any problem with that? The point is that what he actually, explicitly said is banal at best or stupid.

Kaepernick was also trying to make a similar sort of point. What a shame that he felt the need to use slavery eh?

You run into this with Kaepernick too where people defend him because he's attacking a group they like or they like what they believe is under his figurative speech I feel that the people defending both Kaepernick and Kanye are defending what they see as a nugget of a point in their ramblings and absurd comparisons.

I don't even disagree with many of those potential nuggets (empires do have systems to assimilate people and make them accept it, apathy is a thing, we today have been sapped of a certain amount of...I dunno, feeling of control over the destiny of our civilizations?). But that's not what Kanye said.

Black people on some plantations outnumbered whites.

At the time of Spartacus there was a huge glut of slaves. They rebelled. How did that go? Nat Turner rebelled. How did that go? Plenty of peasants around, yet often peasant revolts ended horribly.

The fact that any order comes up with social systems to take up some of the work of force doesn't mean that force isn't lurking, isn't a dominant consideration in people's minds or that force isn't actually effective.

This is giving me "why didn't they just pull themselves up by their bootstraps?"

I don't even disagree with many of those potential nuggets (empires do have systems to assimilate people and make them accept it, apathy is a thing, we today have been sapped of a certain amount of...I dunno, feeling of control over the destiny of our civilizations?). But that's not what Kanye said.

I think it is.

“When you hear about slavery for 400 years,” he said. “For 400 years? That sounds like a choice. You was there for 400 years and it’s all of y’all. It’s like we’re mentally in prison. I like the word prison because slavery goes too direct to the idea of blacks. Slavery is to blacks as the Holocaust is to Jews. Prison is something that unites as one race, blacks and whites, that we’re the human race.”

Perhaps this is necessary context. This is from New Slaves, on the album Yeezus -

My mama was raised in the era when,

Clean water was only served to the fairer skin,

Doin' clothes, you woulda thought I had help,

But they wasn't satisfied unless I picked the cotton myself,

You see it's broke nigga racism

That's that "Don't touch anything in the store",

And it's rich nigga racism

That's that "Come in, please buy more",

"What you want, a Bentley? Fur coat? A diamond chain?

All you blacks want all the same things",

Used to only be niggas, now everybody playin'

Spendin' everything on Alexander Wang

New slaves

He's not saying "they only like us when we are rich", he's saying they distract us from the pursuit of freedom with material possessions and with racial prejudice, pitting us against each other so we don't notice them pulling our strings.

He's said similar things in interviews with people like Joe Rogan (and I thought Candace Owens too, but I can't find any interviews between them, google just shows me a billion opinion pieces bitching about the both of them.)

The fact that any order comes up with social systems to take up some of the work of force doesn't mean that force isn't lurking, isn't a dominant consideration in people's minds or that force isn't actually effective.

Exactly. You don't need to whip them every day because they have been mentally enslaved, the fear of the whip, of lynching and brutality keeps them in line. Even after slavery was abolished. The first step in freeing yourself from mental slavery is to say "I would rather die free than live as a slave" and to mean it.

You keep calling it banal, but you aren't explaining why. If it's so obvious and unoriginal, why is everyone flipping out? Why are you explaining exactly what he means as if it is somehow a rebuttal of what he said?

It is a God damned fucking atrocity that black people were so terrorised and brutalised by slavers that it has instilled such a horrible and depressive mindset into them, but agency is agency - you can only be given so much freedom, primarily you have to take it for yourself. And when someone is beaten down so much that they accept living in poverty, they need to be shocked into action, because gentle sympathy just excuses them from trying.

Like Bill Cosby said, it is the soft bigotry of lowered expectations. And we do it to everybody living around the poverty line these days. I don't know if you are dismissing it as "stupid" and "bootstraps" because you are enslaved or because living in poverty is too alien for you to understand and you think middle class sensibilities should be respected at all times, but I strongly disagree.

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