dagSeoul: Writing about Whiteness, White Privilege, Crass Libertarianism Super-Post
In June last year, I began working on how I write about whiteness, white power, capitalism, and anti-capitalism mainly to develop concepts that are central to a manuscript I’m working on. Immediately, I was engaged by two groups of tumblr bloggers: libertarians and social justice bloggers. Neither appreciate my representations of free market capitalism and white social justice activists. Too bad, right.
I’ve received several requests for a post with links to what I’ve written. This is not everything, but it includes the posts where I work on concepts I think are significant.
I’m into revision, so I’ve edited and proofed and added a little here and there, but this is mostly as it was posted. You can use this long post if you like as each entry is present after “Read More”, or save the individual links. I’ll add to it as people help me find things I’ve written that they’d like included.
- dagNotes: Notes On Whiteness, White Power, Capitalism & Anti-Capitalism
- On Crass Libertarianism (a vehicle for white supremacist capitalist society)
- dagNotes: A little bit on how I see privilege and white power working, even in Korea
- White Power 101: White Privilege Denial Discourse
- Why it’s racist. In one sentence.
- (On why colorblindness is white supremacist.)
- To Ziggystardyke: On Being White
- dagNotes: The reason I wrote “White is not a skin color”
- dagAsk: Three Lessons
- Possessive Whiteness
- 11A. Possessive Whiteness and Liberals:
- dagNotes: on writing about whiteness
- My Super-Post on Crass Libertarianism, Liberty, Ideology, Ron Paul fans
Shame on #wellsfargo! #downtown #denver #happeningnow #colorado (Taken with Instagram at Wells Fargo Bank)
Chinese Man Kills Self to Protest Son’s Death in Tiananmen
BEIJING — A Beijing man has hanged himself to protest the government’s refusal to account for his son’s death in a military assault on the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations, a group that seeks justice for victims of the assault said Monday.
The group, Tiananmen Mothers, stated on its Web site that the man, Ya Weilin, had disappeared Thursday and was found Friday afternoon hanging in a newly constructed parking garage beneath his home.
The statement quoted family members as saying that Mr. Ya, 73, had written a note earlier that recounted the death of his son, Ya Aiguo, and warned that he would “fight with my death” against the government’s refusal to hear his grievances.
“I can tell that he was in extreme despair when he made the decision,” Ding Zilian, who heads Tiananmen Mothers, said in an interview. “His wife has just gotten out of the hospital for rheumatoid and it must be so hard for him to leave her,” she said.
“His wife told me Mr. Ya had been dreaming about his lost son for a few days in a row before he left home,” Ms. Ding said.
The son, Ya Aiguo, was said by his mother to have been shopping with his girlfriend several blocks west of Tiananmen Square, on the city’s main thoroughfare, when the 22-year-old was shot in the head as People’s Liberation Army troops moved through the city toward the Tiananmen protesters.
The government has maintained that about 200 people died in the assault the night of June 3 and 4, including many soldiers. But most estimates of the death toll from that night’s violence range from hundreds to several thousand.
Thousands of protesters were later arrested, and scores remain imprisoned today, according to the Dui Hua Foundation, a San Francisco rights group. But the Chinese government has said virtually nothing about the crackdown for 23 years, and has ignored demands that the assault be independently investigated and its victims compensated.
The Tiananmen Mothers statement said that Mr. Ya and his wife joined the group’s periodic protests and signed annual petitions demanding that the government address the deaths.
“Mr. and Mrs. Ya signed our yearly petitioning letter every year with their real names, despite police intimidation,” said Ms. Ding, of Tiananmen Mothers. “They received many threats from the police, but they never flinched.”
Her group’s statement called his death “a new sin that has been added to old unredressed grievances.”
It was unclear whether Mr. Ya’s suicide was linked to next the 23rd anniversary next Sunday of the Tiananmen crackdown. The government bars commemorations and protests of the incident and frequently moves to silence Tiananmen activists around that date.
In Hong Kong, 1,000 to 2,000 protesters marched on Sunday in an annual protest against the assault, the first of several events scheduled to mark the anniversary.
Similar thing happened after the Sichuan earthquake in 2008. Concrete school buildings lacked metal frames, so they crumbled like dollhouses in the earthquake. A horrifying amount of children died, but parents were denied the opportunity to even see their children’s bodies and those who attempted to protest with their children’s pictures were arrested and silenced.
I honestly can’t even with the Chinese government.
10 Things You Should Know About the Quebec Student Movement
Wondering why you keep seeing Quebec students on the news or online? Here’s some really great information on the student protests there.
Black scholarship and black scholars are viewed as suspect and having to be justified, while implicitly white scholarship is seen as neutral, worthwhile, and objective.
What’s true of the media is true of academia: the legitimacy and value of “traditional” (disproportionately white) fields are taken for granted. There’s little room to question the “objectivity” of white mainstream scholarship, despite the long history of institutional racism in academia; still less room to articulate the indispensable contribution Black and other Ethnic Studies have made to our knowledge.
Without Black Studies, what would we know of black protest of Jim Crow, slave revolts (and white suppression of records of these revolts), or the medical exploitation of black and brown bodies? Who would chronicle not just the struggle, but the achievements, creativity, and joys of black lives and experiences? Do naysayers really imagine white scholarship, on its own, has given an honest account on these topics? Or are such accounts simply irrelevant to them?
On The CHE‘s Reinforcement Of Suspicion Of Black Academia | Racialicious - the intersection of race and pop culture (via blackposeidon)
