So at what point in this process does good manners become bad masters?
Why should you believe it starts with the rather benign position expressed by Andy Ihnatko?
He lost me at asking permission for candid shots and replaying them. The A-Kon approach or the bracelets with color code for photo preferences are way more sensible.
You think someone looks silly, and you wish to humiliate them in your Instagram? Shame on you and donāt take that photo.
Iām bringing this up on the next Juggalo thread.
Not that Iām one, and not that I have a deep respect for them (Iām glad theyāre not doing the next Gathering anywhere close to me) butā¦you know.
Honestly, I think itās because most white people who agree with this line of reasoning come from privileged backgrounds, and assume that all white people come from similarly privileged backgrounds.
And the thing is, so many people look at the percentages and rightly see that, yes, among non-white people, a higher percentage of nonwhite people are in poverty, so they therefore assume that just about everybody thatās poor is non-white. Iāve been driving trollies through the data, because Iāve had more than one person tell me this is the case, and something didnāt seem right about that. And yes, you look at the data, and officially less than 10% of white people are below the poverty line. The thing is, thatās still about half the people below the poverty line. To be perfectly fair, though, the poorest of the poor tend to be non-white.
Why do I say this? I donāt know if anyoneās noticed, but thereās a correlation between poverty and crime. You tell me I canāt understand that a person would turn to stealing to feed an alcohol and/or drug habit? You tell me Iāve never met anyone who got arrested for looking like a criminal? Never had to wonder if you have anything to worry about when a skeevy car drives by? Never had the local cops drive by your house on a āsilent runningā drug run? Youāve never been to my small Midwestern town, then.
This is a long-winded way of saying that Iām pretty sure the people who say āIāve never had to worry about being assaulted because Iām a white guyā come from an incredibly privileged background.
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How is it really an encumbrance to ask permission?
And the bracelets have yet to be proposed and adopted, correct?
AFAIK, the bracelets already work on that mentioned BDSM/fetish/whatever convention.
Asking for permission all the time annoys those who would give it anyway (after you are asked 150th time youāll start resenting it), breaks workflow in case of photojournalism, and unless done ex-post does not allow for candid shots. Introvert people also have more problems interacting with other people than with the camera. The blanket A-Kon style rule solves all this neatly.
Then we are getting to the time of emerging telepresence technologies. Combining realtime streaming over wifi or cellular networks with virtual reality will allow attendance to people who could not attend otherwise, whether for time or money or travel constraints (not everybody can travel to where he wants to be, whether for financial or disability reasons), and alternatives to being physically present are highly important there. I for one strongly dislike traveling for both the cost and annoyance factors and having to deal with too many people along the route, and would welcome this tech with wide-open arms.
Part of the problem is that the article doesnāt say white males people donāt really have to worry about assault. Instead, he says āI donāt spend any time whatsoever worrying about someone on the street exploiting or attacking me.ā Then brian_carnell decides to translate that as him saying that āwhite men are immune to being victims of assaultā and cites some statistics. Well, those same statistics show that if instead of simply looking at āassaultā we look at all crimes of violence, or crimes of completed violence, then we get a different picture:
Completed violence:
White male: 4.3
White female: 11.6
Black male: 4.9
Black female: 8.9
Those are some pretty serious differences.
Crimes of violence:
White male: 20.2
White female: 29.2
Black male: 16.1
Black female: 23.0
The lower rates seen for blacks here seem to be because blacks are robbed less frequently, and also have lower reported rates of threats and simple violence.
And the big category the author was alluding to might be rape and sexual assault, in which case the numbers are:
White male: 0.3
White female: 0.6
Black male: 1.0
Black female: 2.9
Of course, these are only about actual reported crimes/threats, and not about the low-level but systemic harassment and exploitation that occurs.
And hey, in your own post you suggest that the 90% of whites who are above the poverty line probably donāt have as much to worry about even in terms of āassault,ā so I guess that means 90% of white come from an incredibly privileged background?
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You need to go back and read the original quote:
It doesnāt really matter what I think, though. Iām a white guy.
I donāt spend any time whatsoever worrying about someone on the street
exploiting or attacking me. When I was in high school, I did spend one
intensely-memorable night being chased off of the road and through the
woods on foot by a pack of guys Iād never met, who declared their
intention to beat the crap out of me when they caught up with me.
Incidentally, I lost them, and made it home safely.
Soā¦yeahā¦and, just what the heck do you think āassaultā is, anyway?
You could argue that 99.9% of Americans come from an incredibly privileged background.
Legally, an assault is an intentional act that causes reasonable fear of battery. Battery is the unlawful touching of another without their consent that either causes injury or is offensive to them.
The document cited is obviously using āassaultā in the colloquial sense, although legally they mean"battery."
But this distinction is irrelevant, because the author was clearly not talking only about assault/battery. Instead, he told us about the only time he has ever happened to worry about being exploited or attacked. That incident happened to be an assault/attempted battery. He has likely never been followed, whistled at, demeaned, insulted, come on to, propositioned, offensively profiled/stereotyped, or objectifiedā¦ which is why he doesnāt give examples of this ever happening to him. These are not issues he worries about on a daily basis, nor does he worry too much about assault/battery from his isolated incident when he was a teen.
You could, and it would be a stupid argument.
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Speaking of class and poverty, it is interesting that Boing! Boing! didnāt see the need for a 4500 word dummyās guide when āPeople of Walmartā was a thing: http://boingboing.net/2009/09/03/people-of-walmart.html
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The site is still alive and well.
You could, and it would be a stupid argument.
Well, how about 86% of Americans, then? Almost all of us have access to food, water, electricity, and transportation of some sort. The same cannot be said of an appallingly high percentage of humanity.
But those people arenāt in SF, fighting against Google and Kevin Rose.
Well, if you want to go down that road, then your complaint (which is already misguided enough) about how white males are also subject to violence is an incredibly privileged one by any mesure.
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