Red Mosquito

Moving on, thanks Jenny McCarthy, for all you do!

http://www.babble.com/mom/measles-outbr ... -children/

I wasn't talking about freedom of speech here, or Twitter (although they are a microcosm of it). I wasn't talking about this conversation. Do you have any idea how many discussions I've had like this, both online and in real spaces, all of my life? Do you have any idea how the right to dissent is blocked by 'reasonable' and 'objective' majority-society, for a host of oppressed groups? The pattern that happened here, where certain opinions were laughed off and others were lifted up, is a microcosm of something people of many groups -- including Asian Americans, Native Americans, and disabled people (to say nothing of disabled Asians or Native Americans, who have it even worse) -- experience in life all the time. That pattern, on a cultural-wide level, will end up with Twitter being denigrated as a venue for 'serious activism', and Colbert's joke not being properly addressed. All the while, the rights to free speech of Native Americans themselves have been completely unchanged in the furore. What I am arguing is that rather than saying Suey Park -- a member of an ethnic minority which has received centuries of racism -- did not have a point, we should be questioning the extent to which this kind of white, televised satire, regardless of how well-intentioned it is, actually works to change the structures of systemic racism from which it comes. The system which allows Colbert to go unchecked, and Suey Park to be laughed at, is the same system which will consistently play down the causes of those who are against racist sports mascots. The fact that many people in Colbert's audience will be great fans (and therefore staunch defenders) of American football as an institution just feeds into this again.

CopperTom wrote:Very few people actually understand what freedom of speech really means.

Minorities know how the philosophy plays out in practice, and that it can never mean free speech for all. While Colbert has his right to free speech defended under the guise of 'art', Suey Park and Twitter activism (of which I am a part, along with other disabled activists, some of whom are bed-bound and unable to do what society calls 'real activism) will get brushed under the carpet again. And the Redskins name unaffected.

My point was freedom of speech, at least in its American usage, pertains to the government's censorship of its' citizens; it doesn't really pertain to conversation and debate between individuals. Even if Comedy Central decided Colbert was too controversial and canceled the show, while it would be questionable it wouldn't be a violation of Colbert's freedom of speech.

I didn't really see many people saying that Twitter is unable to be a tool for activism; one need only look at the Arab Spring as proof otherwise. What people were saying is that Twitter, for the most part, is ill-equipped when it comes to nuanced arguments.

harmless wrote:Twitter activism (of which I am a part, along with other disabled activists, some of whom are bed-bound and unable to do what society calls 'real activism) will get brushed under the carpet again.

What are the definable changes you believe represent an end goal for your branch of activism? For example, one of the desired changes of the 1960's equality movement was the end of institutionally promoted segregation. One of the desired changes of the Tea Party protests was an end to government influence and the elimination of specific policies they felt/feel limit individual freedom. If you were to summarize the primary (recognizable) shifts that you are advocating, what would you say that they are?

I recognise that on Twitter, the emphasis for activism is on the sharing of information and ideas about ableism (systemic and individual), on helping to shape a wider discourse around disability and the aims of disability rights activism in general. I am a poet, a writer, and believe that language shapes people and culture (look at propaganda as an example). The emphasis is less on actually physically bringing about concrete changes to systemic ableism (and not through structures and systems that shut us out by default anyway) but by being a part of shaping the minds, thoughts and language of people towards those projects. In short, raising awareness of how the political is the personal. Look at how such and such policies affect disabled people's daily lives on the ground. Meanwhile, IRL and outside of the confines of Twitter, grassroots activist groups work to bring about physical changes like, for example, the defense of the Welfare State, the long-term disabled's safety net with which to live life and work, the protest against closure of the NHS, and anti-disability hate crime efforts. Twitter activism, for me, is primarily about showing people that these issues and causes actually exist, and highlighting the fact that these agendas are often pushed out into fringe venues like Twitter because they are not being addressed in government. They will always be 'disabled people's causes', and Twitter will always be the venue where disabled people meet to talk about them, share one another's insights, and provide solidarity for one another. Being a presence, and wanting to increase visibility of disabled people and their issues, is so undervalued in our society. Being that digital presence is important, I think digital activism can be considered 'real activism'. It just has a different task to that of activism in the non-digital world.

I feel as if the denigration of Twitter activism is ableist, particularly, because it shuts out the voices of those people who sometimes can't even leave the house. How will they get a seat on the activism tables that Capitalism has to offer? They won't. And this is true of so many groups of people. It's not a simple case of some people will, others won't, without interrogating who those people are, and why society continues to push their voices out into fringe spaces, whilst giving other voices easy access to a mainstream pedestal and a paypacket. The Capitalist world tells us that if we don't get 'up there', it's simply because we haven't tried hard enough, or because we've made 'bad life choices' (UK government). My bad life choice was just to be born.

I don't think any civil rights movement, past or present, can be reduced down to a small subset of goals. And I don't think that any civil rights movement, past or present, has an 'endgame'. We always need them. We'll always need them. And no civil rights movement, in spite of all its achievements, has finished (or can afford to call itself 'finished').

If the joke had been made by an Asian correspondent on the show instead of by Colbert himself, would it have been considered acceptable?

It's not about 'acceptable', it's about a people group being able to control the use of their own identifiers and the slurs used against them. So yes, an Asian would have every right to decide how those slurs get used, in my opinion. You can't please everyone, but a white guy using slurs that have never been used to bully him, for the sake of comedy meant to mock someone else, is not really appropriate. From my perspective, I don't want abled people using 'retard' or 'spastic' either, especially when they're just as likely to use those slurs against me in another context. There are tons of ways that joke could've been written; the joke didn't require the use of racist slurs against Asians to work, and if it did? Whoa. Weird.

If I were a comedian or a musician, I would not use the word 'nigger' at a gig. Black musicians, though, should feel free. If they upset other black people in so doing (they may), it's still a conversation which is kept within the confines of Black communities, which are essentially safe spaces in which they can talk about their own collective and various experiences.

All of these things are ways to take away the power to harm from white people (albeit on a language level; there are other levels).

harmless wrote:I don't think any civil rights movement, past or present, can be reduced down to a small subset of goals.

Do you feel that stating measurable goals, and striving to attain those goals, reduces a civil movement? Do you believe that the stating of desired change events necessarily narrows the intention of that movement?

If I were a comedian or a musician, I would not use the word 'nigger' at a gig

Do you feel that you have some insight into when, where, and by whom that word can reasonably be used? Would you feel comfortable with the idea of an able-bodied (as it were) Latino man explaining to other able-bodied (...) people when the word "cripple" is acceptable, and when it is not?

It's good to have measurable goals; every social justice movement has them. But they are legion. There are thousands of goals, private and public, individual, communal and systemic. Many of these will be different, to some extent, depending on the cultural / national context (the US doesn't have a Welfare State or NHS to protect form dismantlement in the same way as the UK does -- which is one of the big jobs of disability rights movements here at the moment -- even if it has many issues which are the same, even universal to do with prejudice and discrimination). The important thing to remember is that no Civil Rights goal is ever 'finished'; it just keeps changing shape, and the discourse around it becomes more euphemistic. Racism isn't over, even in a 'post-race' society. Slavery isn't over. Colonialism isn't over. On the issue of disability, the locking away of disabled people in institutions is not over. The forced sterilisation of disabled people isn't over. Increased access into jobs, independent living opportunities and relationship situations isn't over. Isolation and hate crime is still a very big problem. 70% of disabled people in the UK are more likely to live in poverty and be jobless at any given time. These are all age-old problems, even as the shape of society changes; an analogy, I suppose, might be how the nature of war has changed in a post-9/11 society. It's still war and people still die. Our war efforts are in many ways still self-serving and often amount to colonialism (something which white society tries to tell you is over) under the guise of liberation. Slave-trading and sex trafficking are still a reality, even though the abolishment of slavery -- a stated concrete goal of the civil rights movement -- is supposed to have become a reality. It's a mark of our white privilege (mine as well) that we can afford to celebrate the abolishment of slavery so easily.

But I digress.

Would I be happy for that non-disabled guy to explain to other non-disabled people about the word cripple and its effects? I could be happy about that, yes. I would be happy enough if he could demonstrate, in the telling, that he had become informed about the issues by disabled people themselves; that he had read and listened, primarily, to disabled people speak about the situations that affect them, and hadn't presumed to know. But in many cases (not all) a Latino man who has faced his own prejudices (systemic and personal) might be more likely to take all this into account, because he would want the same treatment. Plenty of people who have taught disability rights well have not been in wheelchairs, and have had 'minor' conditions compared to mine, or even none. But if they do this really well, they tend to have in common the fact that they have avoided the pitfalls of language and disrespect that disabled people experience. So if I'd heard this guy speaking 'for us' in the form of a joke that made me wince, I'd speak up about it, and my conclusion may well be that the positive social impact does not justify the clumsy writing / delivery of the joke. Do I always think this? No. Believe it or not, I've been forgiving of plenty of people in real life who 'did it wrong' because the impact of the general truth they were speaking about was obvious. For example, if I'm being punched in the face and someone defends me by saying "Don't hit him, that's not nice, how would you like it?" I wouldn't question the patronising tone of the 'rescuer', because it would mean I wasn't getting punched. But using racial slurs in irony doesn't stop racial slurs being used in earnest (especially people who feel, when they get home, the freedom to use racist slurs because the comedian did, and he's awesome). This is one danger when white people use racist slurs in irony. Whereas if black people use 'nigger' in a comedy routine, I might laugh and then feel awkward for laughing (which is often the point, right?) but I wouldn't feel the same license to use 'nigger' at home just because that black guy did. A lot of the time this difference in result is completely subconscious; if I call myself a 'crip' (and I do) people don't generally feel license to follow suit, in my experience. So the right is mine to tell them that I don't mind (if I don't mind). All of this is not just putting arbitrary rules on people's use of words, but it's reducing the power of those who have caused the hurts to cause them anymore, and it's increasing the voice and power of those groups who have been targeted. Re-balancing social scales.

And stuff.

Also, by the way, I don't have a grudge against Colbert. I was angry that I wasn't being heard in finding the joke distasteful and the hashtag perfectly reasonable. In retrospect, Colbert will learn to be more careful with his words and everything will be fine and no problem. But there are things to be said about these jokes before the 'Oh well, people aren't perfect' forgiveness happens. Doesn't mean it can't. *shakes hands with Colbert*

On the one-sidedness of 'freedom of speech'. Good post, a bit spiky so if you're not into that....

http://jaythenerdkid.wordpress.com/2014 ... -dudebros/

For the record I agree with her that there is a huge double standard about racism in the media when it comes to Asians.

Wow. Isn't our culture fucking awesome? I'm amazed Suey Park kept her cool.

That interviewer handled it poorly.

However you feel about the #CancelColbert thing, I think we can all agree that this Taiwanese animation about it is kind of funny.

theplatypus wrote:That interviewer handled it poorly.

However you feel about the #CancelColbert thing, I think we can all agree that this Taiwanese animation about it is kind of funny.

thats a pretty racist caricature of ogres at 1:16.