Show me any human who isn’t an ape and I will show you a delusional nutcase.
Since she also referred to ebonics, it is probably safe to assume she wasn’t trying to have a thoughtful discussion about evolution.
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They were probably “trying to” make some ethnocentric crack, but I would rather attack the substance of their text rather than impotently shame-wag their presumed intentions.
I can both understand why it was objectionable and understand what she was trying to do (make fun of white privilege).
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I think she meant to punch up, but didn’t. It’s a bad joke, in poor taste, poorly executed.
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You really shouldn’t assume that everyone has the same egalitarian species view as you - especially people who pull out comparisions to animals to describe people of color. Those comparisons have a long history of use to dehumanize an entire group of people. Your view of the equality of species is not what people like this are operating under.
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She tried to punch up but missed and ended up pouncing down 
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I agree, but her INTENT was to punch up, for sure.
I’m not denying she was/is a privileged woman, who landed on her feet after all this. But I can also imagine that being attacked on social media is not easy to deal with, no matter how privileged one is, especially over something that was a bad joke misunderstood.
I do think there is something to Ronson’s argument about the mob on social media.
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So she lost her job. Big deal. People lose jobs for things they do. People in public jobs lose their jobs for things they do in public.
It’s all good, people are better represented by either other, whether it’s someone who doesn’t harbour or better hides racist sentiments, or by someone who had their eyes and ears open long enough to not miss the singular most prominent racist trope thoughout several centuries of history regarding people of colour.
No matter how or why it played this way, a mayor has to do better than was done.
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It’s not easy being attacked on social media, but it’s not the worst thing in the world either. The Great Internet Outrage Machine is fickle enough where everything will be forgotten in a month. The best course of action is to just unplug for a month, no big deal. That’s nothing compared to actual criminal proceedings.
I understand that people make bad jokes, but the potential payoff from this joke was extremely low in proportion to all the ways it could go wrong. Plus, in context, the joke was much worse if she made it than if some other rando made it.
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I wonder if someone trying to get out of some contract, or someone sabotaging themselves and their careers, in an act of overt or subconscious self-loathing, would make these sorts of public flame outs, in order to change their lives. Despite the cry and hue that arise, these don’t rise to the level of life ruination and infamy that befell OJ or Monica or Lizzie Borden.
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I agree, I don’t assume or expect much of anything. But for me it’s still seriously weird to denounce somebody for belonging to a category that oneself is in also. Like a republican attacking somebody else for being republican. I still need to roll my eyes over their level of double-think self-deception regardless of specific categories involved. “Are you now, or have you ever been - a Homo sapien!?!?” FFS
It’s not about our collective status as animals ourselves. People like the women in question don’t view humanity as animals, but as elevated because we were “created” by god to rule the planet. Their mixed up, hateful ideology assumes that some people are less human then themselves, because of the color of their skin. There is literally no rationality or scientific or historical reality in that belief. But they have it. Their meaning is not to equate all human beings to animals because they feel like animals are sentient beings worthy of being thought of as equality. It’s to fundamentally dehumanize one set of people precisely because they see animals as less than. For you, it might not be an insult because you don’t see other animals as less than you as a person, but it’s the intent of these people to differentiate white and black lives.
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Eh, I can’t in any context see it as even well-meaning. She tried edgy and it flopped, as it should.
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And that’s part of the grossness, she’s a tragedy tourist, excited to parlay it into Instagram photos and Black Mirrorish reputation, the persons she wants to help are disposable, nameless cases.
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Sure, similar rhetoric has been used to differentiate red lives as well. I just think that deconstructing the substance of those beliefs is more constructive than cultivating outrage and opprobrium, because the latter simply reenforces it as a tribal struggle between opposing ideologies, rather than getting people to think about the situation more critically.
It is uncomfortable being caught in the middle and feeling that most of those who try to counter racism are causing nearly as much harm. But nobody wants to hear that.
I’m all for viewing this through a theoretical and intellectual lens. But… [quote=“popobawa4u, post:92, topic:90468”]
the latter simply reenforces it as a tribal struggle between opposing ideologies, rather than getting people to think about the situation more critically.
[/quote]
the problem is that the people who believe this stuff are not thinking critically or rationally. They will not take what you say about the human species at face value, because they don’t see it as a fact. If you say to a woman like this “animals aren’t less than us” or that POC are just as valuable as human beings as whites, they will not all of a sudden come to Jesus and start agreeing with you - NO MATTER HOW MUCH EVIDENCE YOU PRESENT THEM WITH. It’s not like there isn’t plenty of historical or cultural artifacts to prove this to them. They decide to ignore them and dismiss them as being ideologically driven. Racism has NEVER been rationally driven, it’s always been driven from the bottom up by irrational fears and from the top-down by the perceived need to control the masses.
I disagree. BLM (or the classical civil rights movement or whoever else) is not the same thing as virulent racism that seeks to completely dehumanize POC, because BLM is not seeking to dehumanize an entire group of people. BLM is not the same as the Alt-Right movement. Not by any stretch of reality and I’m really sick of hearing this shit.
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Facebook, handing you the rope to hang yourself since 2006.
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Seriously; I guess it’s another sign of the Dumbening’s effectiveness that so many people seem unable to recognize the obvious pattern here, or to avoid repeating it.
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That’s not what I was saying. Are most people who oppose racism members of BLM? Most of them are not even part of organized groups.
But, for example, some of us even consider the term “POC” othering and divisive. But again, nobody wants to hear that. Even you sound defensive about it, perhaps because you are really invested in the ways these issues are framed. Saying that I think people on either side of an issue are using rhetorics which are both harmful in no way suggests that they are in any way similar. I agree that one side has good intentions, and the other does not. But good intentions are only a start.
