Occupy Nashville RaceFail

Nov 14, 2011 23:22

As someone from the South, I'm used to a certain amount of racism-blindness, but today was troubling ( Read more... )

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teaberryblue November 15 2011, 15:21:37 UTC
That's disgusting.

Oh, look, surprise surprise, "politically incorrect" being used as shorthand for "it's funny to be racist and anyone who takes offense is being oversensitive." Because if you tack "politically incorrect" onto something that you obviously know is going to make people mad, that makes them the bad guys when they get mad.

I also don't get why being creative is supposed to excuse being offensive. Especially when it's not very creative; people do auctions like this at charity events all the time.

And the discussion of being able to separate this from the movement or not is interesting, in re: this and SlutWalk. Because on one hand, it is reflective of our communities at large as opposed to the specific movements, but on the other hand, if the leadership of these movements isn't making it very clear that this is unacceptable, and demanding better of the members of their movements, then those movements need better leaders.

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nicoli_dominn November 15 2011, 18:21:32 UTC
And the discussion of being able to separate this from the movement or not is interesting, in re: this and SlutWalk. Because on one hand, it is reflective of our communities at large as opposed to the specific movements, but on the other hand, if the leadership of these movements isn't making it very clear that this is unacceptable, and demanding better of the members of their movements, then those movements need better leaders.

Hell yes. I second this part especially.

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rime_r November 16 2011, 20:06:06 UTC
Oh, look, surprise surprise, "politically incorrect" being used as shorthand for "it's funny to be racist and anyone who takes offense is being oversensitive." Because if you tack "politically incorrect" onto something that you obviously know is going to make people mad, that makes them the bad guys when they get mad.

Fucking exactly, that makes me so mad. It's positing bigotry and callousness towards the feelings of people of color as some sort of avant-garde, envelope-pushing thing. Because, you know, racism is so novel, and it takes such courage to regurgitate it.

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jabber November 15 2011, 17:22:34 UTC
Auctioning of people, for any reason, validates objectification. It attempts to create an "exception" in which objectification is "OK because it's for a good cause". And "politically incorrect" seems to be an adult version of "I'm rubber, you're glue" at this point.

"Occupy" is so confusing and confused. Many of "those people" have their heart in the right place, but given how deep in their butt their heads are, it's hard to appreciate the good they're trying to accomplish.

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teaberryblue November 15 2011, 18:36:35 UTC
I feel like the thing with Occupy (as someone who has gone to OWS a couple times, donated clothing, but is not involved in actually occupying anything) is that their overall message is a good one, but because many of the leaders have not experienced oppressions apart from economic ones, they tend to believe all oppressions are equal and therefore get pretty careless about equating oppressions in their speech and behavior-- which you can see in the messaging for the auction event especially.

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nicoli_dominn November 15 2011, 18:23:17 UTC
Man, I live in Nashville and I didn't even know about this. I wish I had known sooner so I could have helped try to stop it...even though, as mentioned in the blog you linked, it seemed no amount of criticism was going to stop the auction. Still, better to do something than nothing, right?

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