The high price of stale grievance

[viper37]

Long, very, very long.  But interesting, nonetheless.
Link

In the fall of 2016, I was hired to play in Rihanna's back-up band at the MTV Video Music Awards. To my pleasant surprise, several of my friends had also gotten the call. We felt that this would be the gig of a lifetime: beautiful music, primetime TV, plus, if we were lucky, a chance to schmooze with celebrities backstage.
But as the date approached, I learned that one of my friends had been fired and replaced. The reason? He was a white Hispanic, and Rihanna's artistic team had decided to go for an all-black aesthetic—aside from Rihanna's steady guitarist, there would be no non-blacks on stage. Though I was disappointed on my friend's behalf, I didn't consider his firing as unjust at the time—and maybe it wasn't. Is it unethical for an artist to curate the racial composition of a racially-themed performance? Perhaps; perhaps not. My personal bias leads me to favor artistic freedom, but as a society, we have yet to answer this question definitively.
One thing, however, is clear. If the races were reversed—if a black musician had been fired in order to achieve an all-white aesthetic—it would have made front page headlines. It would have been seen as an unambiguous moral infraction. The usual suspects would be outraged, calling for this event to be viewed in the context of the long history of slavery and Jim Crow in this country, and their reaction would widely be seen as justified. Public-shaming would be in order and heartfelt apologies would be made. MTV might even enact anti-bias trainings as a corrective.
Though the question seems naïve to some, it is in fact perfectly valid to ask why black people can get away with behavior that white people can't. The progressive response to this question invariably contains some reference to history: blacks were taken from their homeland in chains, forced to work as chattel for 250 years, and then subjected to redlining, segregation, and lynchings for another century. In the face of such a brutal past, many would argue, it is simply ignorant to complain about what modern-day blacks can get away with.
Yet there we were—young black men born decades after anything that could rightly be called 'oppression' had ended—benefitting from a social license bequeathed to us by a history that we have only experienced through textbooks and folklore. And my white Hispanic friend (who could have had a tougher life than all of us, for all I know) paid the price. The underlying logic of using the past to justify racial double-standards in the present is rarely interrogated. What do slavery and Jim Crow have to do with modern-day blacks, who experienced neither? Do all black people have P.T.S.D from racism, as the Grammy and Emmy award-winning artist Donald Glover recently claimed? Is ancestral suffering actually transmitted to descendants? If so, how? What exactly are historical 'ties' made of?
We often speak and think in metaphors. For instance, life can have ups and downs and highs and lows, despite the fact that our joys and sorrows do not literally pull our bodies along a vertical axis. Similarly, modern-day black intellectuals often say things like, "We were brought here against our will," despite the fact that they have never seen a slave ship in their lives, let alone been on one. When metaphors are made explicit—i.e., emotions are vertical, groups are individuals—it's easy to see that they are just metaphors. Yet many black intellectuals carry on as if they were literal truths.


[...]

[The Minsky Moment]

the thread running through all three examples is that modern-day blacks are permitted to employ language and behavior for which whites would be condemned

If Barack Obama had been taped making the "grab by the pussy" comments, would he have been elected President?  I think not.

There are plenty of double standards to go around. But the Rihanna incident that leads this essay is not going to provoke much outrage when viewed in full context - for example, that is far from disadvantageous in show business to have lighter skin.

[Malthus]

Long, very, very long.  But interesting, nonetheless.

The title of the article could have been "Je me souviens". 

[viper37]

If Barack Obama had been taped making the "grab by the pussy" comments, would he have been elected President?  I think not.

Would a wide Democrate presidential candidate making this kind of comment would have been elected?  I think not.

No double standard on race here, except that I don't see a black Republican President anytime soon.

There are plenty of double standards to go around. But the Rihanna incident that leads this essay is not going to provoke much outrage when viewed in full context - for example, that is far from disadvantageous in show business to have lighter skin.

Is it a disadvantage to be black in the show business?  I don't think so.  There's plenty of blacks at all levels of the show business.  Compare this with the 60s, don't you notice some little changes, here and there?

[viper37]

Long, very, very long.  But interesting, nonetheless.

The title of the article could have been "Je me souviens". 

Given the recent thread of francophobia in Canada, we don't need much memory to remember

[Grey Fox]

The answers to both grievance being under handed laughter is that the dominant group thinks that the oppression of the dominated group has ended.

[Valmy]

If Barack Obama had been taped making the "grab by the pussy" comments, would he have been elected President?  I think not.

Could anybody who wasn't Donald Trump survive those sorts of comments? And that is just the beginning.

[Malthus]

Long, very, very long.  But interesting, nonetheless.

The title of the article could have been "Je me souviens". 

Given the recent thread of francophobia in Canada, we don't need much memory to remember

Wouldn't the same be even *more* true for Blacks in America, though? 

[Valmy]

The answers to both grievance being under handed laughter is that the dominant group thinks that the oppression of the dominated group has ended.

Huh?

[Malthus]

The answers to both grievance being under handed laughter is that the dominant group thinks that the oppression of the dominated group has ended.

Though Blacks in America have a better claim to remaining "dominated" to this day than francophones in Quebec, by any objective measure.

[Oexmelin]

Quillette

[Valmy]

The answers to both grievance being under handed laughter is that the dominant group thinks that the oppression of the dominated group has ended.

Though Blacks in America have a better claim to remaining "dominated" to this day than francophones in Quebec, by any objective measure.

What sorts of objective measures?

[Oexmelin]

Though Blacks in America have a better claim to remaining "dominated" to this day than francophones in Quebec, by any objective measure.

To this day, yes, without a doubt. But to give a measure of the historical situation in 1960, French Canadiens then completed, on average 10 years of school compared to 11 for African-Americans, and their salary was 52% of those of Anglos (that of African-American, was 54% of white Americans).

[Malthus]

The answers to both grievance being under handed laughter is that the dominant group thinks that the oppression of the dominated group has ended.

Though Blacks in America have a better claim to remaining "dominated" to this day than francophones in Quebec, by any objective measure.

What sorts of objective measures?

Any, really. 

How about incarceration rates? % of Blacks in America in prison vs. non-Blacks in US vs. % of Francophones in prison in Canada (or Quebec) vs. non-Francophones.

[dps]

If Barack Obama had been taped making the "grab by the pussy" comments, would he have been elected President?  I think not.

Could anybody who wasn't Donald Trump survive those sorts of comments? And that is just the beginning.

I still don't understand how Trump survived those comments.  I would have believed that no on could have, yet he did.  What's so special about him?  Given that he could survive it, I'd have to think that others could too.