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Notes -
This is the correct answer. Of course African American history is important to know, so simply offering the class as an elective is perfectly legitimate. I would prefer a more general ethnicity course, which covers the issues relevant thereto globally, not just in the US, but still.
Well, I said ethnicity, not skin tone. Regardless, the question is not whether the experience is "coherent." It whether examining
and comparing data from a variety of societies is likely to be more analytically fruitful. I think the answer is yes. Works like this one, work on middleman minorities, and John Ogbu's work on immigrant social mobility certainly benefited from that approach.
Edit: Added links.
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This whole thread makes me think that we have people who think that it's "woke" to portray African-Americans, or black people in general, doing anything interesting, important or notable, so I'm going to use it as a point to discuss something else I've thought about for the last couple days...
Some days ago I noticed that there is going to be a new movie called "Chevalier" on a black composer/musician in 18th century France. The way I saw this was noting that far-right social media persons like Lana Lokteff were yukking up how ridiculous the mere idea that such a person might have existed is. "We wuz and shieet" and other trite catchphrases in full display, declarations that wokes are now going to claim that Mozart was black (because the post Lokteff is quoting talks about him as "black Mozart"), that the only reason why this movie is made is anti-white hatred (because the composer is portrayed as facing racism) etc.
Of course, even a modest amount of Googling would show that this movie is indeed about a real person, Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges. The trailer does not appear to show anything that would majorly clash with the Wikipedia article - Chevalier de Saint-Georges did indeed enjoy fame in prerevolutionary France, was an accomplished swordsman, at least was rumoured to have an affair with a female aristocrat, experienced racism (because of course he would, this was an era when there was still slavery in the French colonies, and of course a biopic is going to show the subject facing adversity) and was involved in the French Revolution.
He's not supposed to be a literal black version of Mozart, and the trailer does not even refer to Mozart - it obviously happens in France, and if you know literally anything about Mozart, you know he's an Austrian. Based on the Wikipedia article and other stuff I've read about him, he was a fascinating man, and the only weird thing about there being a movie about him is that no-one has made one sooner. The only weird thing about the trailer is that there's no obvious reference to his duel with Chevalier D'Eon, which would of course have the potential to take accusations of preposterous wokery to stratosphere.
Some comments (not necessarily in Lokteff's thread, maybe in one of the quote threads) indicate that it's still odd that someone would make a movie about such an obscure character(???) or that they doubt Chevalier de Saint-Georges even existed, because, well, apparently 18th-19th century Frenchmen would invent a black composer just so that someone could make a woke movie about him in 2023 to foment white genocide.
This seems also remarkable in the way that if there's one thing where even anti-black racists have sometimes acknowledged black talent to exist, it would be music. Apparently the whole narrative about black accomplishments and innovations just plain don't exist as reached the point where a large portion of the "race realist" sphere recoils at portraying black people as anything beyond literal A. Wyatt Mann caricature types.
Oh, hey, I wrote a paper about that guy in high school French, all the way back in 2004. TBH, I didn't even remember he was black, but vaguely remember the other stuff. If I still have that essay on a jumpdrive backup of my HS nettwork drive, ...' I probably won't read it, because I remember barely squeezing out something I thought I could get away with turning in, but I am at least a little confused that I'd forget almost everything but the guy's name.
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His oeuvre isn't notable, private life par for the course for someone of his time, place and class.
Given that Galois still lacks a movie, despite his professional accomplishments being notable in their own right while his non-mathematical behaviour is quite cinematic (involved in the French revolution (1830), spent .5 of a year behind bars, once released get into a duel over women, die in said duel aged only 21), means biopics aren't made in descending order of interestingness of the person depicted.
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What % chance is this movie made if its about a straight white male? What other French 18th century minor celebrities have gotten movies in the last 20 years? The selection of the character was obviously made for woke reasons. Its not even clear he is the most prolific 18th century composer named "Chevalier". There are 3.
Chevalier here is not a name but a title (rendered in English as "knight")
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Speaking of accomplishments of black people in 18th century Europe, for anybody familiar with Russian history, there's this guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abram_Petrovich_Gannibal
English Wiki unfortunately doesn't do full justice to his fascinating biography - he was captured and gifted as a slave to Peter The Great, got education, was freed and grew up to be a man of many talents, who took active role in Russian politics, served under several emperors (or empresses, as it were), was exiled to Siberia and then brought back, got highest military rank in Russia, was overseeing the whole army's engineering corps (there's a joke somewhere here about the army engineering works being so corrupting you need to bring a person from far away Africa to effectively manage it), introduced Russia to the concept of eating potatoes (they were known before, but not as common food), and was a great-grandfather of Alexander Pushkin, considered the founder of modern Russian literary tradition.
Interesting parallel with Alexandre Dumas, author of The Count of Monte Cristo, whose father was also a black general (son of a slave and a french aristocrat). A little suspicious. Did these authors make up an illustrious and exotic ancestry in their diversity essay?
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I think you are pointing to a real thing. I do find the whole dynamic frustrating and perhaps you're only addressing the right wing side of it because you think it's what this community, especially in the context of this thread, needs to hear. But it does feel quite incomplete without addressing that it is in response to what really does seem like an obsession among progressive creatives to add representation to every type of media. No, that some right wingers fell for it does not say volumes about their enemies or however that quote goes but this might be a good time to look at the whole dynamic from a top down view to better understand why partisans believe what they do.
The argument/values conflict at play I think is the left with "representation matters" and the right with either "You're retconning our culture and we don't appreciate that" or "This is not actually an accurate representation" or even "Hey this stuff is starting to look really cynical, it's starting to seem like you don't care at all about the myths you're rewriting".
To steelman the Left's representation narrative.
Straightforwardly representation just matters. It's important for young minority kids to be able to see themselves as agents in society capable of anything. Majority people don't have this problem and cannot easily understand how disempowering it is to grow up never seeing anyone who looks like you represented in the media you consume. The epitome of this is that reddit story of the black kid seeing Mile Morales and exclaiming "He looks like me!". This is the kind of story that ultimately melts ours hearts and even my black cynical heart lightens three shades at the thought*. It costs very little to get minorities this representation and many of us just straight up find joy in it for its own sake even if it might be partially vicarious.
There already is an overwhelmingly large amount of white representation in society. It's not hard to find images like this poking fun at the concept. Just for the sake of variety exploring other identities and cultures is valuable. Most of the super heroes are cis hetero white dudes as is historical canon, as are contemporary figures just because of demographics. And if your for some reason want to watch all white media you can settle for merely 40% of new content or look to the back catalogue.
These media products always had ideological components and preachiness, you just didn't notice because it was preaching your ideology. Did you not notice how every villain for a decade was a cell of brown middle eastern terrorists?
To Steelman the Right's 'stop shoe horning' narrative
Our culture and myths actually matter, cynically retconning aspects of them completely divorced from their context is cheap and the outcome is almost always mediocre because you're prioritizing ideological soap boxing over quality.
It's very uncomfortable that your idea of progress seems to, at all times, consist of minimizing the existence and representation of people like me. It may be unfortunate that other races/gender/ect have less representation than us but it was never an explicit goal of ours**. It's tremendously difficult to shake the frame of "us vs them" when your absence is celebrated by 'them'.
There seems to be a kind of cynical element where you are going out of your way to offend us as a marketing technique. You release some new revision of an old IP custom designed to be maximally antagonistic towards us hoping that there is a backlash, and sometimes generating one yourself, in order to trick people into thinking consuming low quality corporate produced slop is meaningful political action.
Conclusion
Now this 'Chevalier' movie actually sounds pretty solid and like it doesn't deserve the scrutiny from the right it got. But for every Chevalier that seems to be a half dozen 'Velma's. In a better world without this culture war front I don't think it would have gotten that scrutiny. But we don't live in that world.
I'd appreciate refinements on the basic generalized arguments on each side of this debate. I think there is a kernel of truth in both but they're kernels deep in the center of massive irritated swellings of culture war.
*My black cynical heart refuses to let me get through this without a foot note that the The Walt Disney Company trademark probably paid good money for me to see this reaction on reddit.
**ours being contemporary mainstream conservatives. Please don't quote me some historical racist diatribe about keeping undesirable out of the film industry that zero mainstream conservatives today would endorse.
arguing against both steelmen
I don't think representation matters for either 'empowering' or improving outcomes of minorities in an already anti-racist society. In terms of being motivated or moved by media, consider how anime, which is thoroughly culturally japanese, is loved by whites, blacks, and others worldwide.
On the other hand, 'minimizing white people' is only really bad to the extent it represents confused or malicious tendencies among those minimizing them - by the same logic above, it doesn't really do anything other than that. So directly and vocally pushing back against black representation isn't effective, and just makes you look kinda dumb like "LESS BLACKS IN VIDEO GAMEZ".
And it seems unlikely imo 'offending as a marketing technique' is a contributor to even 10% of casting lots of ethnic minorities, or 'woke themes' in shows generally - it seems like a big change for a small effect, I haven't seen any internal-to-production accounts of that (whereas I have seen some internal accounts of cartoons or tv shows being written or cast by 'crazy wokes'), and the explanation of 'people who really want diversity' is much simpler
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I did notice how for approximately one decade, the demographics of terrorism were accurately portrayed (in the ballpark of 75% Muslim) on a small number of TV shows (24 and Homeland being the only notable ones) which likely gained popularity for that reason. Note that "accurate" is perhaps overstating things; from what I recall, seasons 2-5 of 24 (season 1 was pre 9/11) had about 50% Islamic terrorists. The primary terrorists on Homeland (at least in season 1) were 50% white.
Both of these shows were both heavily criticized for this.
I'll also note that even on these TV shows, the portrayal always very carefully exemplified the George W. Bush ideal that the problem was Islamic terrorism, not Islam. Frequently Islamic terrorists were merely pawns of evil Dick Cheney-ish white people (season 2 of 24 - Halliburton engineered the attacks to start a war in the middle east and sell weapons) and Muslim anti-terrorist agents were nearly always included in the cast. Characters who were unreasonably suspicious of good Muslims were frequently portrayed.
I also noticed that before and after that, most terrorist villains were explicitly made European to avoid offending people.
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Your post reminds me of the archetype of a 'centrist' movie/video game critic persona found on various blogs and Youtube channels that would go on tirades against Anita Sarkeesian and the like for 'pointing out sexism' and whatever else. To the point they would be denying reality itself just to rebuke every word ever written by a feminist.
Just like the reason for the main character in a video game being a guy is sexist and the reason the women in the game are dressed to sexually provoke men is sexist, the reason for this movie existing is racist. There is no lack of fascinating men in the world. The reason this fascinating man is getting a movie is because he was black.
To borrow an argument from Anita Sarkeesian: It's not that you can't make a game about men and scantily clad women without it being sexist. It's that the reason for these things existing today as they do and the cultural context surrounding them is sexist, and it's worthwhile to recognize that and point it out for what it is. The same is true here. It's not that you can't, in theory, make a movie about a black man beating the odds in white society. It's that you can't do it today and not recognize it for what it is and most importantly why it is.
Actually, the argument makes a lot more sense for black people headlining movies than men in video games. Because most of the audience for those games is made up of men. (Statistics showing that many women play "video games" misleadingly lump all types of video games together. The types of video games that people like Sarkeesian complain about and which star men have a largely male audience.)
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