What does a BIDEN Presidency look like?

[Eddie Teach]

https://youtu.be/hGUDujDCfFE



Here y'all go. People using woke unironically to describe themselves.

[Valmy]

Sorry to post about Joe Biden in the wokeaholic thread.

Anyway I thought he did well and even got Ted Cruz to go to sleep.

Summary please

Promised social support and some progressive legislation. Said we are getting out of Afghanistan but God is still blessing the US military and we still kick ass. That kind of thing.

[Sheilbh]

Shelf, I think your request for more precision and concensus on the meaning of woke is a defense lawyer's tactic. 

I'm mainly a contract lawyer - I just like defined terms so we all know what we mean and what we don't mean.

I think it matters because I think it's easy to talk in the abstract about labels - when we each maybe mean something quite different by that label. But actually when you get to the issues (like the actual bodycam videos) there is far more commonality and broad agreeement.

And I think Carville's point is right - Biden's first 100 days has been more succesful and more radical than I expected by focusing on the sort of brass tacks. From what I can see Republicans have struggled to find a way to attack things most people support and do seem to be casting about for some way that Biden's agenda is a woke outrage etc.

But I think outrage is a good starting point.  I think there's a large overlap between woke and outrageaholic.  Outrage about perceived social injustice.  Outrage that others don't perceive it the same way.  Outrage that others mock their outrage.

Interesting - do you think it's possible to be woke and not on social media?

Because again things that have been attacked woke in UK discourse (which is all I know in real detail - much as I love watching and reading America) include Prince Harry, the BBC, Joe Biden, the National Trust, English Heritage and certain fad diets. None of which, I'd suggest, are particularly outrage-driven.

[Syt]

https://www.texastribune.org/2021/04/27/sid-miller-farmers-lawsuit/

Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller alleges aid to farmers of color discriminates against white farmers in suit against Biden administration

The conservative Republican and rancher states in the lawsuit filed Monday in Fort Worth federal court that he is suing in his capacity as a private citizen — not on behalf of the state.

Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller is suing the federal government claiming that the Biden administration's COVID-19 relief plan passed last month discriminates against white farmers and ranchers.

Miller, a conservative Republican and rancher, states in the lawsuit filed Monday in Fort Worth federal court that he is suing in his capacity as a private citizen — not on behalf of the state.

Among several other major provisions, the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 offers relief to "socially disadvantaged" farmers and ranchers, which the plan defines as people of color. Miller's complaint against the U.S. Department of Agriculture says the definition in the program fails to include "white ethnic groups that have unquestionably suffered" because of their ethnicity, such as those of Irish, Italian, German, Jewish and eastern European heritage.

Attorneys are seeking class-action status for the suit on behalf of white farmers and ranchers.

The lawsuit is sponsored by America First Legal — a group founded by Stephen Miller, Donald Trump's former senior adviser, along with other Trump officials to be a conservative response to the ACLU.

"America First Legal opposes discrimination in all forms," AFL President Stephen Miller said in a statement.

Black farmers in America make up about a quarter of disadvantaged farmers targeted in the relief bill and have lost more than 12 million acres of farmland over the past century, according to the Washington Post. Agricultural experts and advocates for Black farmers say this stems from systemic racism, biased government policy and social and business practices that have denied African Americans equitable access to markets.

The American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 is a $1.9 trillion economic stimulus bill signed by President Joe Biden last month, which would provide an estimated $10.4 billion for agricultural and food supply-chain programs. Nearly half would go to relief for farmers of color. While Congress passed last year's $2.2 trillion CARES Act with significant buy-in from both political parties while Donald Trump was in the White House, the American Rescue Plan passed solely with Democratic votes in both the House and Senate this year, after Biden was elected.

The lawsuit says that the exclusion of white ranchers and farmers in the program is unfair and asks the court to declare benefits targeting only people of color unconstitutional.

"Doing so will promote equal rights under the law for all American citizens and promote efforts to stop racial discrimination, because the way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race," the lawsuit states, saying the program "lurches America dangerously backward."

The lawsuit was assigned to U.S. District Judge Reed O'Connor, whose court became a favorite for the conservative Texas Attorney General's Office for federal lawsuits fought during the Obama administration. A 2007 appointee of President George W. Bush, O'Connor handed Texas several major wins over the federal government opposing Democratic policies, including gutting Obamacare, ruling against family leave benefits for gay or lesbian couples and blocking guidelines to allow transgender students to use bathrooms aligning with their gender identity.

Miller has repeatedly been criticized in the past for sharing or amplifying racist memes, as well as misinformation and unfounded conspiracy theories on his social media accounts.

Spokespeople for Miller, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the American Farm Bureau Federation did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The complaint asks the court that if it doesn't rule the definition unconstitutional to "at least" expand it to include those of Anglo Saxon heritage that have experienced historical discrimination or include those with "any discernible trace of minority ancestry."

"An interpretation of the underlying statutes that excludes plaintiffs like Miller because he is not 'black enough' would raise grave constitutional concerns under Bolling v. Sharpe and it should be rejected for that reason alone," the complaint states, referencing a lawsuit where the U.S. Supreme Court case held that the Constitution prohibited segregated public schools in Washington, D.C. "The statutes should not be construed to empower the Department of Agriculture to choose a minimum threshold of minority ancestry when determining eligibility for benefits."

https://americanindependent.com/sid-miller-stephen-texas-agriculture-commissioner-bigotry-lawsuit-racism/

[...]

In 2015, Miller shared a photo on his Facebook page of an atomic bomb mushroom cloud with the caption, "Japan has been at peace with the U.S. since August 9, 1945. It's time we made peace with the Muslim world."

[...]

While supporting Donald Trump's campaign in 2016, Miller referred to Sec. Hillary Clinton using the misogynistic slur "cunt" in a tweet. Miller blamed the posting on a hacker and then later on a staffer.

But in a tweet a few days before the incident, Miller wrote on Twitter, "My thoughts are my own," calling into question his attempts to blame the posting on others.

"It's disrespectful and not something I would want my name attached to. We apologize for that," he later told the Houston Chronicle.

In 2017 Miller posted a story to his Facebook page alleging that a group of hunters had been attacked by Mexican immigrants at their campsite. In a comment posted alongside the story, Miller endorsed Donald Trump's border wall.

"This is why we need the wall to secure our borders," he wrote. "There are violent criminals and members of drug cartels coming in."

But the story was false. The sheriff's department that investigated the claim found that the injuries that had occurred were due to an incident of friendly fire among the men.

In June 2020, Miller promoted the debunked conspiracy theory that liberal philanthropist George Soros had financed protests over the death of George Floyd.

"I have no doubt in my mind that George Soros is funding these so-called 'spontaneous' protests," Miller wrote. "Soros is pure evil and is hell-bent on destroying our country!"

And in December 2015, Miller tweeted, "If one more person says Happy Holidays to me I just might slap them. Either tell me Merry Christmas or just don't say anything."

[garbon]

It is interesting how 'woke' has now been slotted in by white people where 'playing the race card' used to sit.

I know I sort of lobbed this in right before I went to sleep last night and then haven't yet addressed as demands of work have prevented me from finding a quiet moment.

I have been reading Languish recently with increasing feelings of disquiet as we have repeatedly decry woke individuals and breezily note that they are not the least bit woke.

Before I went to sleep last night, I stumbled on the following article which I think gave a bit of a voice to what I've been feeling as of late. Note, I'll just be pulling in some selected passages but I think this article and the others I'll be posting are relevant reads.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/danabrownlee/2021/04/19/why-white-people-should-stop-using-the-term-wokeimmediately/?sh=59edc6777794

Exhibit A Bill Maher: Why White People Should Stop Using The Term 'Woke'...Immediately

As a 50-year-old Black woman, I have to confess that for years every time I heard the term "race card" interjected into a conversation, it felt like nails on a chalkboard. Immediately, the hairs stood up on the back of my neck, and my amygdala warned me that the person I was engaging with was both insensitive and dangerous. Now, our society is arguably in the midst of a racial reckoning nearly a year after George Floyd's murder, and the public relations winds have radically shifted. Companies and individuals who previously eschewed (if not demonized) racial justice platforms/protests like Black Lives Matter and Colin Kaepernick have instead raced to affirm their support and solidarity with anti-racism related hashtags, social media posts and donations. No, we don't hear the phrase "race card" mentioned much in daily conversation any longer, but a new term, just as insidious, has cropped up to take its place—woke.

Woke is problematic for two primary reasons. First, it's an offensive cultural appropriation. As is disturbingly often the case, White people (or any racial group outside the term's origin) will sometimes begin using a term that originated in a community of color often as a term of pride, endearment, or self-empowerment years or decades later while either willfully or inadvertently distorting the original meaning of the term. While any significant analysis of what cultural appropriation is and why it's problematic is beyond the scope of this article, suffice it to say that hearing White people randomly label individuals and organizations "woke" is very often an unsettling, if not infuriating experience. 

I first heard the term "stay woke" within the Black community more than a decade ago to mean "stay vigilant", "don't be fooled", or "don't sleep" (to revive an even older relic of colloquial Black parlance). Soon, the term "woke" found its way into broader society to connote someone who is racially conscious.

...

However, in more recent months, the term has increasingly traded it's more positive-intentioned "conscious" connotation for a pejorative, condescending one. Increasingly, influencers (oftentimes but not always White) have latched onto the term "woke" and weaponized it as an easy way to dismiss or discount a racial issue, platform or grievance offhand as extreme or utterly nonsensical. To be fair, are there issues, platforms, or grievances on the topic of race that are extreme and utterly nonsensical? Certainly, as that would be true of any topic, but this deceptively simple four-letter word has become the anti-racism napalm that we don't need in the struggle for heightened awareness and sensitivity around complex racial issues.

Second, the term's use often prevents the deep, honest, sometimes uncomfortable conversation that arguably is our only pathway to real reconciliation. Let's face it – engaging in sensitive, nuanced conversations around race is challenging enough without the irresponsible insertion of the term "woke" providing an ideological off ramp that shuts down any real listening, learning or self-reflection on issues that really require all three for authentic progress. "Throwing terms like 'woke' around as a way to dismiss the very real and consequential concerns of an entire group of people is just another way of saying, 'I don't want to be inconvenienced by your pain,'" insists equity consultant and C-suite advisor, Tara Jaye Frank. In fact, when White people weaponize the term "woke" during a discussion, it doesn't just disrespectfully discount that specific person or issue but also sends a not-so-subtle message to their peers that if something feels extreme to you, you have license to just discount it. This type of signaling is counterproductive if not dangerous. After all, White people prioritizing their feelings over racial justice progress is arguably what has held us in a purgatory of racial inequity for centuries.

...

Any student of the American civil rights struggle should be well acquainted with the White liberal's history of complicated and capricious commitment to true anti-racism progress. Arguably, this current boomerang effect of sorts may be the result of White progressives deeming themselves to be "woke" (in the sense of being racially conscious and progressive) and therefore in a position to become the arbiter of what is "too much" on the road to racial equity.

...

While there's very little to be certain of in this moment of racial reckoning, I'm certain that real progress will require more listening, not less, an inclination towards learning, not a stubborn resistance to new ideas, more opening up, less shutting down, more introspection, less defensiveness, more facts and truth, less visceral dismissiveness, more grace and respect and less self-righteous indignation. Using the term "woke" to stigmatize someone else's perspective is immature and offensive. It feels dehumanizing...just like "the race card" because after all, for many of us racism isn't a game.

The fact that any particular ideology, policy or idea can go too far or lose the benefit-cost ratio battle should go without saying, and it's preposterous to even entertain the suggestion that simply because a person of color suggests or promotes an idea or platform, it should automatically be adopted (again, beyond obvious). So, when you find yourself in disagreement with an idea, platform or policy related to race, just say so. If the issue is that flawed, it should be easy enough to pick it apart on the merits, right? Everyone is entitled to their opinion and offering a different perspective, asking questions, analyzing pros and cons all show a basic level of respect for all parties involved, but labeling something as "woke" as a means of arrogantly dismissing it often feels like a convenient cop out for those who seem allergic to self-reflection, thoughtful analysis....or maybe accountability.

As such it feels like woke has deviated from any original meaing to a symbol to note that a person has gone to far. Here's a list from the guardian showing some of the original purpose but then some of how it has been contorted when it has gone mainstream:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/nov/21/how-woke-became-the-word-of-our-era

How 'woke' became the word of our era

...

1. Woke extends to conversations around art, politics, economic and social class, gender inequality, trans rights and environmentalism. But woke in its original incarnation rests on activism and blackness.

2. The essence of woke is awareness. What you are newly aware of (a pay gap, systemic racism, unchecked privilege, etc) and what to do with that newfound knowledge is the question. And the answer keeps changing depending on who you talk to. But regardless, you've answered the wakeup call, pushed your way out of bed and are now listening.

3. To be woke, in the original sense, is to understand James Baldwin's declaration: "To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time." It is to understand the unique kind of exhaustion that comes from being perpetually attuned to discrimination. It is to be weary and wary. To be woke is to long for a day when one doesn't have to stay woke.

...

6. The goal is to wake up and then stay that way. As in, be on guard, ready to recognise, call out and actively resist the biases, fake news and inequalities as they come, as members of the Black Lives Matter movement do, posting smartphone footage of unlawful killings, assaults and arrests, sometimes with the hashtag #StayWoke, and campaigning for legislative change. Woke is serious business. Often said aloud with a raised closed fist reminiscent of the famous black power salute at the 1968 Mexico City Games.

...

12. Woke is often the result of cultural appropriation – which is tragically ironic, given this is one of the very things the act of staying woke would be on high alert against. See woke's journey from black political circles to white internet slang via headlines in mainstream media. Also see the Evening Standard's "woke-ometer", which measured people on a scale of "asleep" (Theresa May) to "woke" (JK Rowling) ... and included no people of colour.

13. Not only is woke a political state of mind – it has been commodified. When Nike featured Colin Kaepernick, the NFL star who protested against police brutality by refusing to stand for the national anthem during his nationally televised games, many accused the brand of woke-washing, the act of cashing in on social justice.

14. But woke is at its most powerful, and valuable, when it is lived and not mentioned. When it's not viewed as a quality to be smug about. Martin Luther King Jr, Steve Biko and Angela Davis didn't declare themselves activists – they didn't have to, their actions defined them. Woke people know not to, and need not, describe themselves as woke.

15. Woke has been weaponised, used in conservative media circles as an insult, often placed within quotation marks, to mean rigid, uptight and socially and politically puritanical. When the Duke and Duchess of Sussex decided to step away from their roles, the Daily Mail complained that Harry went from "fun loving bloke to the Prince of Woke".

...

17. Dropping the word "woke" into conversation among strangers in a social setting is a pretty easy way to determine where someone sits on the political spectrum without having to invest too much time in uncomfortable debates. Just watch for the nods, stiffened smiles or eye rolls.

...

20. Ultimately, wokeness is rooted in love – of self, family, humanity – just as injustice is rooted in hate.

21. Despite its inherently pessimistic nature, woke is hopeful. To search for Badu's beautiful world requires the belief that one is out there – or at least, capable of being made.

Then from Vox (which also follows a history of the term):

A history of "wokeness"

...

For instance, consider how the phrase "woke discourse" gets used on social media: The "discourse" can be about a zillion different things, but attaching "woke" to it usually denotes a perception of embittered exhaustion at progressive semantics and arguments.

What's telling is that the exhaustion seems to come from moderates and leftists themselves as often as from conservatives — as if there's a shared agreement that embodying wokeness is a kind of trap, no matter what side of the aisle you're on.

...

Prior told me she likewise was leery of the ostentatious behavior associated with "woke" — but was more distressed by the increasing tendency of conservatives to use "woke" as an insult. "I have had private conversations with pastors who have used it as a term of insult," she said, "because it's hard — it is hurtful to use a term that is so meaningful to people and to use it in an entirely different way, it's just simply wrong."

"On the one hand," miles-hercules said, the term "has been commodified in marketing to connote a host of associations to things like diversity, inclusion, and so on, in order to turn a profit by appealing to progressive sensibilities. Additionally, it has been plundered into conservative and right-wing discourse as a means of mocking and satirizing the politics of those on the other side of the proverbial aisle."

...

It seems, then, that the evolution of "woke" since 2014 is almost a direct reflection of a larger cultural evolution during the same period. Since Ferguson, the ideas and idealism behind various social justice movements have frequently been co-opted and distorted. In the case of the Black Lives Matter movement, conservatives have even reframed the protests as being a contributor to — even the cause of — the violent system they inherently oppose. This has typically been done through petty, disingenuous, exhausting semantic arguments, assisted by bad actors, bots, and trolls, and all of it has been done through and around the word "woke."

It strikes me all as such ugliness over non-whites just wanting to live the same sort of lives what white people live - to not be put at a disadvantage, to not be the subject of violence, to not die because of the color of one's skin. And it pains me to see posters at Languish mimic such posturing when I know they are not racist.

I also read the Carville interview now and noticed that he doesn't even have a solution on what words should be used to advanced the Democratic agenda beyond noting that they should be terms that speak to white America / Joe Manchin. Oddly(?) when speaking about terminology the only Democrats he namechecks are AOC (where he doesn't really even cover anything she has said, but almost like her name is enough of a talisman to know she says nothing of value - well maybe he gives her a backhanded compliment over Greene), Kamala Harris (though he doesn't actually cite anything she's said, just that supporters in Miami deified her as a liberal god) and Maxine Waters (where he oddly praises her for telling a Republican to shut up - which seems exactly the sort of language that doesn't fit in civilized discussions). I came away seeing yet another old white man telling me that women of color aren't using the right terms but offering nothing up as a solution.

On that point, I thought this 538 article had a good point:

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-attacking-cancel-culture-and-woke-people-is-becoming-the-gops-new-political-strategy/amp/

Why Attacking 'Cancel Culture' And 'Woke' People Is Becoming The GOP's New Political Strategy

...

First and perhaps most important, focusing on cancel culture and woke people is a fairly easy strategy for the GOP to execute, because in many ways it's just a repackaging of the party's long-standing backlash approach. For decades, Republicans have used somewhat vague terms ("dog whistles") to tap into and foment resentment against traditionally marginalized groups like Black Americans who are pushing for more rights and freedoms. This resentment is then used to woo voters (mostly white) wary of cultural, demographic and racial change.

In many ways, casting people on the left as too woke and eager to cancel their critics is just the present-day equivalent of attacks from the right against "outside agitators" (civil rights activists in 1960s), the "politically correct" (liberal college students in the 1980s and '90s) and "activist judges" (liberal judges in the 2000s). Liberals pushing for, say, calling people by the pronoun they prefer or reparations for Black Americans serve as the present-day analogies to aggressive school integration programs and affirmative action. These are ideas that are easy for the GOP to run against, because they offer few direct benefits (the overwhelming majority of Americans aren't transgender and/or Black) but some costs to the (white) majority of Americans. In many ways, we are just watching an old GOP strategy with new language and different issues.

I feel like the semantic argument is a losing game as it appears all too easy for the opposition to twist words to eventually mean the exact opposite of the concept they were supporting. I find it hard to believe there is a magical phrasing that is just waiting to be discovered that will get rural whites to suddenly care about racial issues absent a fundamental change in how we value the humanity of our fellow citizens.

I'll conclude by saying that I find it perplexing to suggest that one's identity should be removed from the situation when discussing issues of racial justice as they are, by their very nature,  fundamentally about identity whether inwardly or outwardly constructed/imposed.

[garbon]

As an aside, facebook reminded me that it has been 2 years since my father, sister and I were trailed by a security guard throughout a whole art museum in upstate New York.

[viper37]

As an aside, facebook reminded me that it has been 2 years since my father, sister and I were trailed by a security guard throughout a whole art museum in upstate New York.

If you only stopped being black, these kind of things would not happen!
Sorry to hear that, that sucks.

[Josquius]

Is this whinging about woke people really a new strategy?
Hasn't culture war bollocks being the centre of republican strategy since Reagen?  Its long been known its the best way to get people to vote for economics that are detrimental to themselves.

Related but I read this the other day. Nothing ground breaking but does frame things in a easy to understand and logical manner.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/apr/20/the-invention-of-whiteness-long-history-dangerous-idea

[Valmy]

Yeah it was "political correctness GONE MAD!!!111" now it is "Wokeness GONE MAD!!!111"

Just more culture war branding shit.

[Berkut]

Bullshit.

Fucking bullshit.

To be fair, are there issues, platforms, or grievances on the topic of race that are extreme and utterly nonsensical? Certainly, as that would be true of any topic, but this deceptively simple four-letter word has become the anti-racism napalm that we don't need in the struggle for heightened awareness and sensitivity around complex racial issues.

I never brought up the term woke - and neither did Carville. Someone else did. If you don't like the word, don't use it. It's ironic that the argument that Carville WAS making, that language matters and we should consider how we label things and how we talk to people we want to convince of something, is EXACTLY the same argument being made here!

You can't get pissed that your term is being used in a useful way in an argument where your claim is that the terms being used don't matter, it is the ideas behind them!

Let me repeat what she said:

To be fair, are there issues, platforms, or grievances on the topic of race that are extreme and utterly nonsensical? Certainly...

So what are we arguing about?

*I* am arguing EXACTLY about those things on THIS topic (and it isn't even about race at all) that are in fact "extreme and utterly nonsensical". Calling for the abolition of the police is extreme and utterly nonsensical, and further, it fucking harms what we are trying to accomplish.

That is it. You cannot pin all that other crap on me, because I am not owning it. I am not trying to use this as a clever way to disguise my secret "white people" racism.

[garbon]

https://www.vox.com/22338417/james-carville-democratic-party-biden-100-days

Sean Illing
Sounds like you got a problem with "wokeness," James.

James Carville
Wokeness is a problem and everyone knows it. It's hard to talk to anybody today — and I talk to lots of people in the Democratic Party — who doesn't say this. But they don't want to say it out loud.

[Jacob]

That is it. You cannot pin all that other crap on me, because I am not owning it. I am not trying to use this as a clever way to disguise my secret "white people" racism.

Who is trying to pin all that other crap on you?

[Solmyr]

What's the problem with being called woke, anyway? It's like being called a SJW. Yeah, I'm so offended by being called a person who supports social justice.

Or this:

[DGuller]

I'll conclude by saying that I find it perplexing to suggest that one's identity should be removed from the situation when discussing issues of racial justice as they are, by their very nature,  fundamentally about identity whether inwardly or outwardly constructed/imposed.

The reason why identity should be removed from any discussion if at all possible is because otherwise you can't have a fair or useful discussion.  When one side is allowed to present arguments in a way that cannot be challenged by someone else not belonging to their identity, you can't have a discussion. 

Even if your identity or unique life experience does give you the right to say something unimpeachable, you really shouldn't, because then the conversation becomes a lecture.  Your lecture isn't going to convince people who didn't agree with you before, but it's going to make them resentful that you now made it impossible for them to continue arguing with you without them looking like assholes.  It doesn't apply just to race, it also applies to Russian immigrants who go "I know socialism when I see it, I lived it", or it used to apply to Holocaust survivors who had the final say on what is or isn't oppression.

[Maximus]

What's the problem with being called woke, anyway? It's like being called a SJW. Yeah, I'm so offended by being called a person who supports social justice.

Or this:

Yeah, "wokeness", "PC", "SJW", "identity politics" etc. used as pejoratives is echoing alt-right propaganda and I have a hard time taking seriously any argument that uses these terms.