ObsidianJones said:
What exactly did I overstate, really? I just told you my own experiences as a child. I thought I couldn't be a hero because I was black. I thought I couldn't survive because the black guy dies. To say I'm overstating my life experience is... baffling.
If that's what you felt at the time, that's tragic. But - to paraphrase what you said to me earlier - that's on you. The idea that there weren't any black superheroes or fictional role models in general, now or even 20 years ago, is false.
ObsidianJones said:
And you're right. There should be representation for both. For all. But when I hear 'spare a thought for people who were already well represented', I tend to side with the ones who didn't get that same representation. It's a character flaw, I'll admit.
I see the angle you're approaching this from and I'll give my response a bit later on.
ObsidianJones said:
This is what I'm responding to. I agree that equal representation is healty for any child to grow up. I know that. You know that. But the difference is that I know that a Black Ariel doesn't remove from white kids representation. Not only is there a ton of other things coming down the pipeline with people that will look just like them, once again, Black Ariel does not remove Red-Head Ariel from Canon.
Allow me a small "gotcha". If that's true, then it's equally true that Jewish Kusanagi and White Goku don't remove their original depictions from canon. People were still pissed though, weren't they?
ObsidianJones said:
You do know the 'White Man's Burden [http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5478/]' is from a Kipling Poem, right? It was used for a way to incite people to try to go along with Annexing the Phillipines. The White Man's Burden is to bring 'civilization' to those backwards enough not to have the inherent majesty of the White Man's Culture.
The Burden is 'Oh, how terrible is it to be so great and having to rid those backwards non-whites of their foolish ways'.
I'm sure you meant it in a different way, but you should know the origins of the terms you use.
Sure, I was using it in the sense of a White-specific Obligation or even White Guilt. You seem to have got my meaning at any rate.
ObsidianJones said:
And lastly, no need for unnecessary digs at Saelune. There's nothing remarkable about Saelune giving honest contributions. That's a regular thing.
It was a backhanded compliment to a poster that I usually disagree with so fundamentally that I sometimes wonder whether it's a deliberately provocative persona.
ObsidianJones said:
Minorities are still the puddle. White People are still the ocean in terms of representation and allocation of power. A few people wanted to add to the puddle for some reason and took a water can and poured it's contents into the Puddle. People who are for the ocean saw this and got enraged. They got fleets and fleets of water tankers, drained Lake Ontario and poured it into the Ocean... not realizing it's somewhat foolhardy as Lake Ontario is connected to the Ocean already.
OK, this is the philosophical basis for social justice that I completely disagree with. This idea that we make things fair by tallying up grievances and injustices on both sides and then attempt to either punish the more privileged side or give the aggrieved side some kind of reparations. I think that stinks because - quite aside from the fact that civilised society doesn't usually punish the son for the crimes of the father - it's such a broad strokes solution that the undeserving benefit and the innocent are punished. Not just occasionally, but routinely. Positive discrimination, quota systems, gender or race-specific education grants, "progressive" gender or race-swapping.
Then you have the school of thought that says two wrongs don't make a right, and what's more it's the principle that matters. Stealing a hundred dollars from a rich man is still a crime even if he can handle the loss better than a poor man. Dumping a barrel of toxic waste in the Pacific is still bad, even if dumping the same barrel of waste in your swimming pool would be worse to you. And, putting arguments of scale to bed for a minute, injustice is still injustice. Discrimination is still discrimination. Just because we have nice politically hot words to describe injustice in one direction - whitewashing! Blackface! Misogyny! Colonialism! - doesn't imply that the same act in the other direction is just or benign. When I make this point I usually get plenty of comments along the lines of "Boo hoo, male tears" or "Oh no, it must be terrible to be white in the West" but very few people able to point out where the error lies in my reasoning. Ultimately, all I'm advocating is a level playing field and the rules applied fairly.
The first, "corrective" version of social justice can never succeed, in my opinion. Firstly because some historical injustices are so great they can never be repaid in a simplistic, transactional way. How do we repay the debt for slavery, for example? 300 years of white slaves and black slave owners, maybe; whose conscience would that satisfy? Reparations, maybe? Who pays? All white people? What, even those who arrived in America after abolition? Secondly - you don't heal division by actively perpetuating that division, even in what is apparently a well-intentioned or progressive manner. Pragmatically, because people get naturally suspicious when they know the dice are loaded. Positive discrimination both denies minorities the ability to be judged on their own merits and fosters a bigotry of lowered expectations.
It's especially damaging when one group is made to feel another group is benefiting at their expense. How do you think Asian students feel when they have to outperform Latino and Black applicants to get on the same courses, and what do you think that does for sentiments of equality? Back to Ariel; how convincing is the explanation that "black viewers just
need the character more than white viewers do"?
ObsidianJones said:
With that comment about Trump, it's feeling like you're leaning towards reaction. That doesn't help. I once called myself a Black Militant back during the days of the Movie 'X'. I grew up in the ghetto. I saw the injustice and what people do when they have no other options. I wanted to speak out. I wanted to fight. People needed to know.
And they still do. You know what the problem is? People stopped listening after 'Black Militant'. Anyone who's reading this has an idea of what that term means, and tuned their attention accordingly. That's what happens when you have strong feelings and you reach for a strong reaction. The reaction might feel comfortable to house your strong feelings, but it doesn't mean it's the right action to take to effect change. We're feeling that with Trump.
As hard as it might be believed, I don't want anyone eroded. No culture, No Gender, no creed, no religion, no lack of religion. I don't want anything to happen to white people. This world would be lessened if that would to happen. As it would be for any race. Reaction is just to make other people's sorry for their actions, or to make one feel better about what they believed happen to them.
If we want change, we can't go out and try to hurt others. No matter how we perceive things. We have to always bring ourselves to the table, no matter how bruised and bloodied our egos are. And we need to talk. Without name calling, without hurt feelings, without trying to get back. We want to share this world. So we have to work for it with open hearts and minds. Some things we have to give. Because we simply can't share this world if we keep saying "But this is mine and no one else can have it".
Well, it sounds like we broadly want the same thing even if we disagree on the methodology. But to address some of your points here - don't worry, I'm not sliding toward extremism. I have my views but I think they're reasonable, if based in an egalitarian conservatism, and in fact it kind of alarms me when people read me saying things like "let's treat people equally" or "perhaps if you would find this shitty if done to you, don't do it to others" and conclude that I must be furiously dog-whistling out of both sides of my mouth - and my butt hole.
And just to really expound on the Trump thing, I've found that although both sides of the political spectrum simplify and demonise their opposition instead of attempting dialogue, this is especially prevalent on the Left (even in the mainstream) and has recently seen ENORMOUS real-world backlash in the examples of Trump 2016 and Brexit. Both were huge, narrative-destroying indications of the voting public's true sentiments, which the Left for years had been willfully deaf and blind to. It's one thing to have partisan leanings, we all do, but it's quite another thing to hold such a bad-faith opinion of your opponents and their motivations that you get caught with your pants down on polling day. On both sides of the Atlantic, liberals convinced themselves that only a fringe minority of unspeakable bigots would actually vote against them. They were wrong both times. Reasonable, intelligent, only just right-of-centre people have cause to oppose liberal policies, too. If we were to learn from recent history perhaps people would not be so quick to demonise their opponents and immediately ascribe the worst possible motivations to them. The right-on progressive denouncement of anybody brave enough to publicly say they preferred white Ariel suggests no such lessons have been learned.
