What is indigenous white British culture?

[Zetetic]

For example people against publically funded healthcare have hopped on the posthuman train to say, for example, that free treatment to restore hearing to deaf babies is bad because there is no way a doctor with good hearing could possibly understand what it means to be deaf, so it would be an act of violence.

Has this been very successful at undermining publicly-funded healthcare?

It seems more successful at staving of forbidding deaf children from learning to sign, to the best of my knowledge.

(And is it worth contrasting this with the benefits of a recognition of how we might need to involve - in a skilled fashion, yes - deaf people and deaf children in meeting their needs?)

(Or indeed more successful to reduce access to free healthcare, either by imposing legalistic barriers to treatment or questioning the scope of healthcare on the basis of taking against (broadly) identity-based advocacy?)

[Video Game Fan 2000]

I think the common perspective is rather that medical professionals have prejudices, active or otherwise, about both the experiences of pain in and behavioural tendencies of women and people from minority groups, and these are sufficiently exaggerated some of the time so that it's very difficult for someone to convey the pain that they're in regardless of the communicative tools that they employ.

Both sides of the issue are very real. The fact is that the language, images and metaphors used to describe these things assumes a normal of white guy at a certain age, at a certain level of health with certain pain tolerances. I can't remember the specifics but I read a paper last year about the language used in pain in gay men versus straight men, describing how even difference in sexual practice between a narrow social group (middle class gay white men versus their straight equivalent) can lead a huge communicaton breakdown for issues unrelated to orientation or sexually transmitted illness. I think the other famous examples are things like misdiagnosis of ADHD as autism vice versa in women due to the fact that language and communication about social problems are heavily weighted towards "normal" (male) social practices and what discomfort feels like. Part of the problem with being 'marginalised' or shut out isn't just being disbelieved, its being shut out of places where you can learn to understand or conceptualise things in a way advantageous to yourself. The notion that an experience alone will give you the tools you need is extremely bootstrappy. The weird thing about the "cultural turn" is that has its own special way of totally ignoring culture difference if that difference contradicts the privileged position that it ascribes to lived experience.

The side of this about communication, images and how these things (pain studies and linguistic studies of how suffers of chronic illnesses talk about their experiences) are conceptualised is a growing area, and I've heard and read many people present research on it recently, which is why it came to mind as an example. It isn't my area though so I'm probably being hamfisted describing it. Trenter will probably be able to correct this post, as he works with trauma survivors

The Sewell Report is worth considering.

I'm not sure a report by the current conservative government is a bona fide example of "class reductionism" - which is supposedly a specifically socialist or marxist phenomena - any more than tweets by Ted Cruz claiming that the GOP represent the "working class". I don't think bad faith invocation of economically determined inequality by conservatives count. For one thing, they're mostly talking about income whereas I'd hope any socialist worth their salt would be thinking about level of education, access to healthcare, housing security, and a lot of other things when they use the C word. In fact I'd say the Sewell report is an example of what I called a culturalism of class, considering the innuendo about the "culture" of the white working class, a group that hardly exists as a demographic at all, versus others.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

Has this been very successful at undermining publicly-funded healthcare?

Sadly, yes. The position that everyone is irreconcilably different and cannot be siloed into a collective is a key part of the American insurance industry's campaign against public health care. The notion of racial difference being an unbridgeable gap is unfortunately part of that. I think its already a significant element of private sectors pressure on publically funded services in the EU, I'm not sure if its present in the NHS but its at least there at the level of corporate rhetoric. The more extreme examples in the activist world tend not to get reflected directly in privatising or free market dogma, but I can't imagine not drawing a through line from public funding in universities -> public funding in 'community organising' and the non profit industry -> larger encroachments on public service from the free market.

I'd mention the role that phony advocacy on behalf of "people of colour" played in Amazon's recently anti-union victories recently, but I don't want to align myself with some of the worst people who are using that to crow about SJWs and intersectionality. But nevertheless: it was real, it happened, just like many fusty old marxists reductionists predicted. 

(And is it worth contrasting this with the benefits of a recognition of how we might need to involve - in a skilled fashion, yes - deaf people and deaf children in meeting their needs?)

(Or indeed more successful to reduce access to free healthcare, either by imposing legalistic barriers to treatment or questioning the scope of healthcare on the basis of taking against (broadly) identity-based advocacy?)

I think the "why not both?" response here is the only cogent one. Not least because its unpredictable whether people personally experience these things as party of their identity or a disease that they long to be cured (I was diagnosed with a probable chronic illness recently and saw the same split in 'community' around it, and it was something I'd never have expected to foster an "identity" discourse beforehead) - I think if anyone is being prescriptive about which of these people should be feeling then something is clearly going badly wrong with how we're talking and thinking about it.

[Zetetic]

The fact is that the language, images and metaphors used to describe these things assumes a normal of white guy at a certain age, at a certain level of health with certain pain tolerances.

What I'm not convinced by is that using the right terminology actually goes a long way to overcome, for example, beliefs in exaggeratedly low pain thresholds in women and people who aren't white. I'd be really interested to know otherwise though.

Again, I think that the divergent effects between chronic and acute pain in women are interesting. Although they certainly don't disprove the idea that communication strategies on the part of patients cultivate the effect - perhaps women in chronic pain are inadvertently extremely capable of linguistically hacking GP's opioid prescribing behaviour.

I'm not sure a report by the current conservative government is a bona fide example of "class reductionism" ... I don't think bad faith invocation of economically inequality by conservatives count.  ...For one thing, they're mostly talking about income whereas I'd hope any socialist worth their salt would be thinking about level of education, access to healthcare, housing security, and a lot of other things.

I don't think is accurately reflects the Sewell Report, which points at personal wealth and home ownership (as much it dares) and gestures quite a lot at geographic disparity tied up with ecological deprivation.

I mean, I think it's all bollocks engineered precisely with the aim of splitting opposition between class-based, geographic, racial and other concerns - and I just think it's interesting that it is a prominent example of class reductionism given that. (Although you can easily argue that it exists precisely because "the Left" has vacated the space, allowing a wedge to be inserted.)

[Video Game Fan 2000]

I'd agree with the what you say about Sewell report. But I think its more complex than the right rushing into a space the left has vacated. This is yet another area where very dodgy opinions are floating around (Trump "outflanking" Biden last year, Tucker Carlson being more left than CNN, etc) - it did mostly define class on the basis of income and paygaps, however, so it doesn't make sense to describe it as class reductionism as that term is nominally used.

I think its more evidence of the danger of a cultural approach to class happening because there is increasingly less universal or material approach to class. Its a depressing, death spiral of asituation because at worse it gives the right wing internet endless resources to misrepresent actual material demands by the left as purely cultural. It just perfectly fits the model of Facebook and other social media outlets. I do think ultimately the Sewell report was about culture - it seems inseperable from the dogma that there is something specific about British culture that made racism magic away. Same bullshit in France.

What I'm not convinced by is that using the right terminology actually goes a long way to overcome, for example, beliefs in exaggeratedly low pain thresholds in women and people who aren't white. I'd be really interested to know otherwise though.

Again, I think that the divergent effects between chronic and acute pain in women are interesting. Although they certainly don't disprove the idea that communication strategies on the part of patients cultivate the effect - perhaps women in chronic pain are inadvertently extremely capable of linguistically hacking GP's opioid prescribing behaviour.

I think we're talking about the same thing, because these things don't exist as nebulous "beliefs" but rather actual sets of vocabulary, images, metaphors etc. Those things don't just exist on the side of institutions or individuals working in them. The most extreme example is pain thresholds with non white women : which are treated as exaggeratedly low when it comes to self-reported pain but exaggeratedly high in response to how much pain a patient can be expected to handle in treatment. It's not just a free floating idea or trope, its part of how we communicate and conceptualise something. Even right here, now, as we're posting about it.

I don't want to imply I think persuasion or anything like it has a part of it. Its not only how believable male patients are versus others, but whether or not men will know to go to a doctor and feel like that they are able to communicate that something is wrong. I mean, the opposite example is true the case of mental health, because men notoriously seek help at a lower rate and its not just down to "toxic masculinity" of wanting to appear hard, its unfamiliarity with language or ways of conceptualising emotional pain or hopelessness.

[Zetetic]

I think we're talking about the same thing, because these things don't exist as nebulous "beliefs" but rather

I don't think "beliefs" are that nebulous, if I'm looking to them as being outed by actual decisions and behaviour beyond speaking.

(If anything that seems far less "nebulous" and more "actual" than images and metaphors.)

[Video Game Fan 2000]

(If anything that seems far less "nebulous" and more "actual" than images and metaphors.)

Disagree. I meant those in the most empirical possible sense as in metaphors and images that experts in this field have as their objects of studies. Belief in general describes an attitude or what we assumes to be someones perspective; metaphors, images, languages, are stuff looked at cognitively and we can see how it directly impacts a persons self-understanding and ability to communicate.

Talking about certain actions being the results of generalised social "beliefs" is a lot vaguer and makes more assumptions

[Buelligan]

I mean, the opposite example is true the case of mental health, because men notoriously seek help at a lower rate and its not just down to "toxic masculinity" of wanting to appear hard, its unfamiliarity with language or ways of conceptualising emotional pain or hopelessness.

Sometimes brevity, clarity, conciseness can be very useful in these kinds of interaction (and men are often considered more adept at that kind of communication).

[Zetetic]

I don't think I was talking about "social" beliefs, although I'm not sure what this is getting at.

Looking at something "cognitively" seems to end up taking you back to inferred mental objects anyway.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

Sometimes brevity, clarity, conciseness can be very useful in these kinds of interaction (and men are often considered more adept at that kind of communication).

Switching from medical discourse to my home turf, in literary or philosophical writing it is definitely true that conciseness, brevity and directness in writing by men is considering clear and decisive but often seen as gnomic or mystical when its from women, regardless of the content or broader context.

There are a lot of women scholars with reps for obscurantism who are just crystal to me. A corny example might be Judith Butler being accused of being a total fraud on the grounds of obscurity, when her style (at least early on) was an evolution of male european phenomenologists who are praised for their empirical directness and rare clarity.

Looking at something "cognitively" seems to end up taking you back to inferred mental objects anyway.

This is true. But it is how a lot of the studies in how people experience pain or discomfort and how they communicate it are done. Semantics aside: metaphor, vocabulary and images are definitely concrete things we can study. I'm not sure that's true for belief unless we're being very simplistic about what it means. By social belief I mean the assumption that group A always believes such-and-such, or holds whatever preconception about group B. Like we were doing by talking about medical professions and what they "believe" about certain groups. Its extremely hard to look at this critically. How can we measure it? Surveys, discourse analysis, interviews, etymology? Are they conscious or unconscious? Acted or passive? etc. Its incredibly hard to talk about this without making assumptions.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

Tiddly winks.
Unseasoned frozen porkchops on a barbecue.
Little blue bag of salt.
Waiting for the adverts to come on.

[Zetetic]

Like we were doing by talking about medical professions and what they "believe" about certain groups. Its extremely hard to look at this critically. How can we measure it? Surveys, discourse analysis, interviews, etymology?

Yes, some of this and, you know, what different people actually do in response to someone in pain (rather than just what they say about it). (I note this has some echoes of your point about an excessive emphasis on the experience that someone perceives and is able to tell of.)

Its incredibly hard to talk about this without making assumptions.

Yes. Accepting that there's something between stimulus and response turns out to be useful though, right?

[Video Game Fan 2000]

I don't know how that's different to what I was I saying. Talking about the role of language and metaphor doesn't imply a person indifferently detailing their experiences after the fact, it directly informs their actions and reactions at the time. The position I'm trying to take is that the picture of experience directly into action is far too simplistic, and ignores the difficulties that come from social exclusion and economic deprivation, which are still better described in terms of class rather than cultural difference.  Ditto the idea that experience-->perspective, or affect-->expression. There is absolutely something in between, and I don't think appeals to irreconciled social or cultural differences can be made to substitute for that 'something', which they frequently used to be, especially in academic or NGO research situations.

Metaphor, image, vocabulary, concept, representation, etc. are a large part of what is between stimulus and response. I mean, that's exactly what I'm talking about. Its a large part of why those can be observed so accurately whereas talking about the social beliefs or cultural biases of large groups is much more difficult (and the personal manifestation of this is often at the level of imagery and language, representation, etc anyway)

[Zetetic]

For the sake of clarity - I was talking about the beliefs of individual humans.

Metaphor, image, vocabulary, concept, representation, etc.

This seems to be a mess. Vocabulary seems a very different thing to "image" or "concept".

You can "observe" "concepts" "accurately" but assuming beliefs are relevant to GP's prescribing behaviour (and working to investigate these) is beyond the pale?

[Chedney Honks]

Love this pairing. Pretty much the intention of the thread to get these two at it.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

Love this pairing. Pretty much the intention of the thread to get these two at it.

Thunderdomed On Accident On A Saturday Afternoon - The Video Game Fan 2000 Story

[Video Game Fan 2000]

For the sake of clarity - I was talking about the beliefs of individual humans.

OK. How certain are you that individual beliefs about groups can be unpicked from shared social beliefs? How certain can we be that wider cultural beliefs always play a bigger role than the beliefs of smaller social in-groups?

This seems to be a mess. Vocabulary seems a very different thing to "image" or "concept".

You can "observe" "concepts" "accurately" but assuming beliefs are relevant to GP's prescribing behaviour (and working to investigate these) is beyond the pale?

They're different things, but they can be (and are) studied together. You can have a conceptual vocabulary, a vocabulary of metaphors, an image can be a metaphor, metaphors to communicate versus those to represent things to ourselves, etc. Putting aside I agree with your point about inferred cognitive objects, I don't want to get into "are mental objects real?" ffs, its just a fact that I listed a bunch of things studied together when scientists and philosophers study pain and social effects such as the difference in willingness to seek help, how different people are able to describe their own symptoms, the differences between acute and chronic pain, etc.

All of this is worth thinking about rather than just looking at the end point - prescriptions and treatment received, and drawing a line directly from that to social groupings and the assumed beliefs of and about those groups. Marginalisation and class play a part in the entire process, from "shit I don't feel good" to the end point of receiving the prescription. I hate people saying "its much more complicated than that" about political issues like this, especially when its not their field exactly - but this isn't my field, and its much more complex than that. Assuming things about the beliefs of large groups of people, or the practices of certain kinds of people, probably isn't a good start unless you're open to have those assumptions upturned.  The words and contexts people give to their own experiences can inform their behaviours just as much, if not more, than the experiences themselves. Focusing on cultural or social differences becomes a reductionism, in a bad way, at exactly this point because what we assume about peoples beliefs based on who they are can overshadow what they're actually saying, doing and thinking even if social or cultural differences are still an important factor.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

Please don't ask me for citations I've got sweet potato fries in the oven and my fingers are gonna get greasy.

[TrenterPercenter]

I'm coming at things (as I do most things) from a psychological viewpoint; we all have the same emotional hardware so there are of course massive overlaps in our fundamental experiences of the world.  Our hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal systems are the same across the species; you can load different information and suffer varying degrees of dysfunction in that system but "experience" on a bio-psychological level is the same.  It's just nonsense to suggest otherwise.  What people are really talking about are cultural experiences and environments that can appear unwelcoming or racist or whatever; but your kidneys do not know what a traumatic experience contains on a worldly descriptive language based level.

Anyone can say "you don't know what it is like to be me" that is just the phenomena of human consciousness.  We tend to grow to accept this aspect and focus on improving communication to account for this gap.  Every knows that people use this individuality clause to close down discussions; it's teenagering 101.

Racism exists and we can both approximate and continue to learn how it can make people feel; it is not like it hasn't been studied or talked about regularly over the last 80 odd years; there is also the concept of stigma that overlaps with a broad range of issues based in physical characteristics outside of race.  It is a physical impossibility for any human to know another humans mind in entirety; that is not incompatible with trying to empathise.  Empathy is an attempt to understand someone; and really for optimal communication it should be a two-way process - this is what is lacking; if people want to be understood; their the chances of achieving this are increased in being empathetic in return.  No one is at liberty to empathise with a person who refuse to empathise back and the right to empathy should not be limited by colour of your skin or gender.

People should stop confusing wanting to know more about different peoples cultures and experiences and what is being spoken about here in regards to prescriptive movements with problematic methods.  I don't know what everyones deal is but I grew up with a wonderful group of people that I'm still friends with today; I've shared many cultural experiences and practices over the years at parties; mosques; temples; wedding; funerals I also read books, basically give a shit about things like that and talk to them about racism very regularly.  We are all very aware that we have each others backs if anyone should try and hurt one of us for whatever reason (racism obviously being a big concern) that is how a lot of poor people survive.

One friend of mine that is currently being indoctrinated into some of what McWhorter refers to as "neoracists" thinking (not sure if the term is useful) and he explained to me that part of the tactics are to provoke (jolt he said to be precise) and "make white people feel" fearful and what it is like to be discriminated against; hence the insistence on using the word white a lot. The idea is to get people to see how do they like having your colour brought into things all the time; how do you feel having these microaggressions enacted on you?  The question is; is this a morally ok thing to do? Is it useful in promoting equality? and does it naturally give way to much more problematic ideas around race realism?

Good people disobey bad rules that is as true for any government as it is for any leftwing movement.

[jamiefairlie]

Is it not self-evident that there can be no mass movements while the mass is busily sub-dividing itself into tinier and tinier slivers of identity? Those with all the money and the power are happy to keep encouraging this tendency because the only thing that will threaten their position is when the masses put aside what divides and embrace (albeit temporarily) what unites them (Sham 69!) and focus on redistributing wealth and power from those who have to those who have not. The only breakthrough in reducing societal equality we've had is from 45 to 75, when the working class worked together to do just this.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

I don't think a mass movement that can't take subdivisions into account is worthy of the name mass movement. The issue is what basis of do we have for those subdivisions, and cultural difference isn't working. The problem with the absolutist attitude I'm arguing against is that its only all-inclusive on the surface. It leaves out as much as 1950s historical materialism ever did, if not more. The Blairite turn from economic equality to social justice definitely marginalised more people than postwar consensus did - and did so across race, geographic, religious, and gender lines. There's no question it was concocted for the purpose of crippling the Old left, perhaps specifically out of a fear of re-nationalisation of industry in the UK. The blair-era Labour party was merticulous.

I love arguing for the primacy and universality of class politics but the fact is its from the position of a class politics we have to create, not one that actually exists right now. There is a razor line between neoliberal "every one is valid and can be represented in the same political order" and "I don't want to be part of a revolution that excludes any of my comrades" - even so, some of the best people are relativists to the hilt and I want their cares met. I'd rather be wrong in a world that takes the concerns of this post seriously than right in a repeat of the 1960s.

[TrenterPercenter]

I'd rather be wrong in a world that takes the concerns of this post seriously than right in a repeat of the 1960s.

There is no going back the 1960s and of course you have to chart a course that protects the vulnerable and is inclusive to what flotesmysost is saying; this can be done and I'm confident it will be.  Things are always moving and changing; Marxism whilst originally based in the industrial issues of the 19th century says more than this and if you[nb]im using the peoples you here[/nb] are interpreting what he is said in these purely cold economics terms then you are not getting the whole point; it is about what it means to be human and to own ones mind, body and life; there is nothing incompatible with this and combating racism; you cannot be a Marxist and not see racism as a move to disown people of their liberty.

We just need to get better at identity politics not get rid of it; this means dealing with abuses of it and not be afraid to set limits, checks and balances.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

We just need to get better at identity politics not get rid of it; this means dealing with abuses of it and not be afraid to set limits, checks and balances.

The problem with the "identity politics" term is that it conflates what matters to a community with what matters to an individual about being part of that community. Often those things are greatly at odds and it leads either to thinking of demographics as monoliths or atomising them until you've completely debased  the commonalities that matter to members of that group. There's obviously a distinction between what it means to be part of a certain group versus what being part of that groups means to an individual person.

My position is that we need to think more about what matters to people rather than what they are and end the conversation at the "who?" part. Part of the unravelling of support for BLM and MustFall protests last year was an unwillingness by liberals to really respect what those groups wanted, quick to respect POC but quick to reject their demands. I think this is only something an indifferent or universal thinking of class can really cross - from recognition of what people are, to a recognition of what their demands and needs are. Just acknowledging differences exist is clearly a dead end- the profound dissonance of 2014-2016 where everywhere as pride flags and LOVE WINS! during a spike in LGBT homelessness.

[TrenterPercenter]

My position is that we need to think more about what matters to people rather than what they are and end the conversation at the "who?" part. Part of the unravelling of support for BLM and MustFall protests last year was an willingness by liberals to really respect what those groups wanted, quick to respect POC but quick to reject their demands. I think this is only something an indifferent or universal thinking of class can really cross - from recognition of what people are, to a recognition of what their demands and needs are.

I like this position and you bind people together with common human interests and provide solutions to their needs.  However not all #demands are reasonable and should be met.  Reasonable is good term imo; we use it a lot in things like law etc; it's there to assist in making a decisions in world that is various shades of grey.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

Recognition of demands and taking them seriously isn't the same as meeting them.

Our current political system claims to take all groups equally serious but respects no one and doesn't treat things seriously when it comes down to it. The ridiculousness of the Starmer kneeling picture and Pelosi kente cloth images just exude an offensive lack of seriousness about life and death issue. If anything the Sewell report reflects this kind of insulting "anyone can win if they buy a ticket" relativism more than anything like class reductionism.

[TrenterPercenter]

Recognition of demands and taking them seriously isn't the same as meeting them.

Ah but some people would disagree; some people would think their demands were not being taken seriously if they are not met. The left needs to coalesce around notions of what is reasonable and what isn't; for its own sake and protection.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

The fact that people are turning to aesthetic-ized political activism to fulfill demands and expectations about their personal lives probably has something to do with the extremely prolonged and brutal recession and the fact that access to what used to seem like basic things like art, culture, raising a family, having a social life, have become more and more difficult with each passing year. Yesterdays necessities are tomorrows privileges.

That liberals parrot the "too much economic focus" line after an almost incomprehensible explosion in income gap that somehow manages to get worse really lets you know exactly what "class reductionism" refers to and its not the Sewell report or Tucker.

[flotemysost]

I'm massively out of my depth with all the political theory and historical references here as I'm really really not well versed enough in these fields to have anything intelligent or useful to add there. However to clarify - I'm not entirely sure what you meant by this, Video Game Fan 2000

I'd rather be wrong in a world that takes the concerns of this post seriously

but that post was basically just was about my own personal experiences and observations of attitudes towards race in the UK. I suppose because I've grown up around the late 90s/early 00s popular concept of "multiculturalism" (which was perhaps a symptom of the Blairite policies you referred to, maybe) - which with hindsight seemingly amounted largely to cherry-picking certain appealing aspects of minority cultures for tokenistic representation, bish bash bosh, racism solved, apparently - and also because in my case I grew up in quite privileged, predominantly white environments, I failed to see its grave limitations because I wasn't really in close proximity to any contemporary, direct experiences of racial OR class discrimination.

As mentioned, I am mixed race myself, but as I've benefited massively from both white privilege and class privilege my entire life, I can now accept that it was never really in my interests to interrogate and reject that dodgy narrative of hip, palatable multiculturalism (which ultimately as far as I can see did little to serve the great many people in Britain whose reality - black/brown, working class and poor - fitted the stereotype it appeared to be gleefully rejecting and reinventing). Again, as mentioned, I can now see that this reluctance to acknowledge my identity as a person of colour was really rooted in a fear of experiencing the racism and othering that I knew still very much existed in society, but was hopefully reserved only for anyone a bit darker/less middle-class-sounding/with a more foreign-sounding name than me.

Anyway yeah, so class is hugely relevant to this topic and I definitely wasn't trying to suggest otherwise. I suppose what I'm wary of here is in any way unintentionally dismissing the fact that systemic and institutional racism still is tragically, lethally, poisoning UK society, culture and institutions on some level. I'm sure I don't need to give examples (and I know of course nobody here is suggesting that isn't the case) - but what I mean is, I don't think acknowledging that even the most privileged person of colour in the UK has almost without doubt still experienced or suffered because of systemic racism at some point, amounts to reductive identity politics.

Of course every situation has its own nuances and class is very deeply interwoven into this, and I also strongly support the concept that a fairer society benefits everyone - e.g. better rights for women would also be beneficial to ethnic minority communities and LGBTQ+ people (that's a really broad example of course, but my point is I do think these things are connected and should be addressed as such).

However that doesn't rule out the need to examine the UK's relationship with race as an independent issue, and one which is a direct result of both the denial and glamourisation of our colonial past. Of course it goes without saying that context, detail and intersectionality always apply, but sometimes the "who" part is vitally important - that doesn't mean it's the end of the conversation, but on this subject I'm just really wary of downplaying that element because from my own perspective at least, it's only relatively recently that conversations about our (as in Britain's) toxic relationship with our own history are happening in a mainstream arena, and yes, it's possible to cynically view that as just part of a faddish trend for identity politics, but I feel more optimistically that it's a shift towards a fairer and more open approach to the issue.

Dunno. I already feel far too thick for this thread and I suspect what I've written is just irrelevant garbage about my own stupid life, as I always do when this topic comes up, but I definitely don't disagree with the majority of what's being said here (the bits I can understand). But as I said, not sure what was meant by "I'd rather be wrong than... " but I can't see what's so bad about taking those concerns seriously.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

I linked to your post because you used some of the terms/views being criticised to explain your experiences and concerns. I hope you didn't see anything critical in that, my point was only that your post was very good and an example of the kind of insights and sentiments that are easily thrown out when people talk about experience, identity and class as pure abstraction. I meant I'd rather be wrong about ideas if people treated what you've described seriously, than right about ideas and see everything you mentioned ignored. I appreciate the response.

I think the colonial issue is one of the more complex and difficult parts, and in general Europeans are fucking kidding ourselves if we think a few years of cultural 'reckoning' will make it go away or back to normal. Colonial powers, by their nature, absorb and extract ideologies and ways of thinking about the world and use them to their own ends. It's almost a cliché in the history of colonialism to point out how much of the cultural or social aspect of colonialism was a direct reflection of the resistance and struggles of people against being colonised. As a colonial power the UK will do anything to avoid reckoning with its past - even including the language of anti-slavery and anti-racist struggles in other nations (See: Prince Harry and the BBC) in order to make its institutions seem free of sin. Talking about the welfare state is all well and good, but what's the point of addressing those allegedly better political times without talking about how they depended on waves of immigrant labour from former colonies? And the real instances of racism in trade unions? The UK's confrontation with what colonialism did to the world is going to take decades or even longer, and I don't think there is a currently existing political theory or way of thinking about it that can address it all at once - like, how can you put Irish emigration and Pakistani immigration in the same identity category? Grafting the way America is dealing with the legacy of slavery and its civil war over colonial history won't really do much other than disguise the unique institutional barbarism that England has been responsible for. Its hard to think of a more contentious topic, even amoung people who share the same political views. The adoption of American-centric themes of personal identity, narrative history, communitarian sociologies, etc. is, in addition to the use it might have, perfectly in keeping with how colonial powers have absorbed ideologies from elsewhere to cover their hides and be culturally flexible where they are institutionally inflexible.

There's a definite danger in thinking that there is some base level of authentic experience or authentic politics happening, and we can disregard debate or reasoning if we just find the authentic working class or the authentic community activists and listen to them and ignore the conflict of ideas. This is clearly wrong. The colonial period wasn't a social phenomenon, it was an industrial and military one. Representation wins aren't going to make it go away.

[Chedney Honks]

Godzilla vs King Kong