I really enjoyed Netflix’s Love on the Spectrum. It’s a rich collection of social situations involving autistic people that make the viewer cringe. It’s a dating reality show, and it works on that level. It’s not trying to be a documentary that gets deep into WHY these scenes are unfolding. I got married and divorced…
Salon published an explainer about the term “class reductionism”, which actually confused the hell out of everything. It’s actually not hard to understand at all. Slavery and the oppression of black people have always included sexual and symbolic aspects that go beyond economics. It’s also true that communists have generally been on black people’s side,…
I’m still working my way through Wilderson’s Afropessimism, and it’s an instant favorite. It’s possibly the truest description I’ve ever read of what it feels like to be black. It validates the feeling of being a nonhuman scapegoat I’ve had since at least 6th grade. Wilderson tells it like it is. Of course, the truth…
I’m not super familiar with John McWhorter, but a glance at his Wikipedia entry lets me know what I’m dealing with. “Radical centrist.” Wrote a book called Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America. “Considers that anti-racism has become as harmful a force in the United States as racism itself.” “Has criticized microaggression and white…
If we’re having a reckoning about racism in feminist organizations, we need to talk about how “sex positivity” is a major factor in justifying patriarchal white supremacy. Consider what Audre Lorde had to say about BDSM in this interview from Against Sadomasochism: Leigh: How do you see the phenomenon of sadomasochism in the lesbian community?…
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is currently working with the Bidden campaign on climate issues. Earlier this year, the following happened: Asked for a profile by New York Magazine about what role she might play as a member of Congress should Biden capture the White House, the freshman House Democrat from New York responded with a groan. “Oh…
Interesting excerpt from Slave Religion: The “Invisible Institution” in the Antebellum South: The reasons for which slaves sought the conjurer’s assistance were not all so deadly serious. Affairs of the heart, for example, supplied the conjurer with a great deal of business. Henry Bibb was one of many slaves who turned to conjure to aid…
This is the third post in a series discussing excerpts from Liberalism: A Counter-History. For the first two, see here and here. History is very illuminating. I think the average American Democrat doesn’t understand that liberalism originally resisted including people like them. Some of the history is just interesting. For example, while Obama was the…
This is the second post in a series that’s about passages from Liberalism: A Counter-History. The first is here. The third and fourth chapters are valuable for containing the historical facts around a common racist talking point: what about “white slavery?” The point is to try and deny that there was anything uniquely bad about…