Trump tells minority Congresswomen to "go back where they came from"

[Gandalf]

Loomer doing the deadly work in this thread.

Oh, by the way - "Bundjalung"

Now this is just silly. You seem to have decided the word Bundjalung in some way offends me, and that I don't like others using it. You're making a fool of yourself.

Indeed. The fuck was this bit?

[Gandalf]

If not, why can't the people of the United States decide that this current government is bad and replace it with another?

There's a difference between those of us currently living in the US (and by that I mean a process including ALL of us) deciding to change our government and someone else from outside - loomer, for instance - deciding FOR us and dictating TO us.

Then wouldn't that sort of rationale see the US retreating to its borders pre-western genocidal expansion upon the request of any "colonised" peoples?

[loomer]

Loomer doing the deadly work in this thread.

High praise indeed! Thanks Gandalf.

[Effie]

I know that there are major cultural differences among tribes even in the same modern geographic region, though, and am cognizant of the classically British mistake of drawing up borders without regard to the groups living there, so I'll leave that to others. But it's not overall a bad plan, conceptually speaking. But again, it doesn't require the destruction of the United States.

I'll just point out that individual tribes/nations have split because of intra-tribal conflicts and divisions - the Cherokee used to be one group, but there are now three Cherokee nations, two in Oklahoma and one still in Appalachia/the Southeast. "The Hopi" are not and never have been one unified group. Rinse and repeat all over. Meanwhile, other groups unite - the Six Nations were formed of... wait for it... six separate Native nations.

And, hey, are we forgetting the Hawaiians? They're not Native North American, but they are a distinct group. Do we restore their monarchy?

The only reason to phrase the question in that way is if you make certain assumptions about race and ethnicity which presume that Native Hawai'ian people just inherently want monarchical rule and their participation in democratic society is all a pose. Or, alternately, you're a Dengist and trying to insist that Chinese violence against Tibetans is justified because Tibet under lama rule was brutally reactionary itself. The point, as it were, is the autonomy and not an obsession with particular modes of government as being properly ethnic and traditional.

That's because you're advocating giving 2% of the population 500+ votes and 98% of the population 50 votes. That's not democracy. That's an ethnostate.

0.1% of Americans already have 2% of the vote. 31% of Americans have 51% of the vote. The Senate is already wildly unrepresentative, in a way that quite effectively dilutes the votes of people of color. As such, the US would be a white ethnostate and the only reason to prefer the white ethnostate over the red and black ones would be if you were convinced your interests aligned with white supremacy somehow.

[Vendetta]

When I propose to White Folks, they freak out. They say that this will make it so that politics only represents Black folk and that would be bad, and they usually say it with a straight face which makes me think they don't grasp the irony. They offer all sorts of bluster about how this will hurt other minority groups (again, they say this unironically, which is shocking to me), and try to come up with visions of disaster and despair. Then they try and negotiate the representation down. It usually comes down to something like three extra votes for six years, and usually with all sorts of added restrictions on voting. All of which fundamentally misses the point of the thought exercise.

Yeah, you gotta raise the temperature slower if you wanna boil the frog. +1 vote every two elections up to 5, reverting to 1 in 2120. (20 years is far too short a period of time for the notoriously paralysed US legislature to make any real restorative changes anyway).

More seriously though, who gets to do voting is possibly less significant to restoring justice to the US electoral system, racial or otherwise, than who gets to spend money to influence voting.

Most of the power is already concentrated in an amazingly tiny percentage of the population because they control the means of transmission and the messages anyone is able to hear due to the concentration of capital wealth.

[loomer]

As a very quick example of why arguing the North American semi-adoption of Indigenous foodways in the Australian context is silly, I can count only four actually Australian foodstuffs (other than seafood) regularly available at supermarkets, groceries, etc (I'm lucky enough to also have reasonably good access to finger limes, but that's just because they grow around here - they aren't all that commonly available otherwise outside of specialty stores in the big cities).

They are macadamias, lemon myrtle, and kangaroo and emu meat. I can also get davidson and illawara plum now and then in drinks, and the odd bush lemon or quandong likewise, and very rarely as actual fruit. If I go to some effort, I can sometimes get goanna, crocodile, bush turkey, etc - but not easily, and if I want bunya nuts, I have to go gather them myself. The enormous variety of edible Australian plants and animals is otherwise almost completely closed to anyone not fortunate enough to live near where its found (and fortunate enough again to know what it is) or to the handful of restaurants and markets that stock and use things like wattle and saltbush.

It is actually easier for me to find plants from America - either North or South, it doesn't matter - than from my own continent. I can buy corn, pumpkins, squash, potatos, tomatos, capsicums, paw paws, a wide variety of South American fruits, peanuts, pawpaw, sweet potato (but not native yams), and avocado at almost any supermarket in the continent. Asia too, though I won't list all the various Asian ingredients readily available in Australia. If I want nearly any Australian native plant other than macadamias and lemon myrtle? There's a pretty good chance I'll have to grow them myself or go out actively foraging for them.

Indigenous Australian foodways have not received the half-hearted embrace that North and South American ones have by any metric, and arguing from the North American context in this matter is an argument from the most profound ignorance that I can only assume it comes from the mistaken belief that the foods of all Indigenous peoples are treated with the kind of ubiquitousness that those of America are. This is also why the response of 'well, don't bring up the country you're a settler on if you don't want it discussed' in response to 'America's experience does not apply in this context' is utter absurdity - they are so fundamentally different that it simply cannot be argued as valid.

Now, as to why this matters. Spreading an awareness of both traditional and modern Indigenous foodways accomplishes multiple goals. The first is cultural exchange on an even footing - food is the universal ambassador, and moving the foods of the marginalized to the centre creates opportunities for conversation not only verbally but through the non-combative medium of deliciousness; in doing so, the barriers between the dominant group and the subaltern can be loosened and non-contentious common ties ('dang, barbecue is delicious' and 'lamb and lemon myrtle works really well!', for instance) forged in preparation for tackling bigger issues. The second is the opportunity to create new recognition of the history of the places we live in and the lived experience of Indigenous peoples both now and in that history - something as simple as knowing how people used to come up my way in full clans for the bunya harvest, for instance.

The third, and most crucial, is the opportunity to restore lost foods to the landscape and the people they belong to (or, as it may also be considered, who belong to the foods), preferably with ownership of the farms/gathering operations belonging in Indigenous hands. Without this last element, the foodways are colonized, which is undesirable. But with it, the mere act of eating Australian becomes part of a bigger picture that erodes the colonial paradigm with every delicious bite. It is no coincidence that in America and Canada there is talk by Indigenous activists of various tribes of decolonizing foodways and diet (among a larger dialogue on food decolonization that, unfortunately, is largely part of the appropriation of the language of decolonization to refer to more generalized social justice efforts) as a component of restoring culture, land, and ultimately, sovereignty.

[Effie]

As a very quick example of why arguing the North American semi-adoption of Indigenous foodways in the Australian context is silly, I can count only four actually Australian foodstuffs (other than seafood) regularly available at supermarkets, groceries, etc (I'm lucky enough to also have reasonably good access to finger limes, but that's just because they grow around here - they aren't all that commonly available otherwise outside of specialty stores in the big cities).

They are macadamias, lemon myrtle, and kangaroo and emu meat. I can also get davidson and illawara plum now and then in drinks, and the odd bush lemon or quandong likewise, and very rarely as actual fruit. If I go to some effort, I can sometimes get goanna, crocodile, bush turkey, etc - but not easily, and if I want bunya nuts, I have to go gather them myself. The enormous variety of edible Australian plants and animals is otherwise almost completely closed to anyone not fortunate enough to live near where its found (and fortunate enough again to know what it is) or to the handful of restaurants and markets that stock and use things like wattle and saltbush.

It is actually easier for me to find plants from America - either North or South, it doesn't matter - than from my own continent. I can buy corn, pumpkins, squash, potatos, tomatos, capsicums, paw paws, a wide variety of South American fruits, peanuts, pawpaw, sweet potato (but not native yams), and avocado at almost any supermarket in the continent. Asia too, though I won't list all the various Asian ingredients readily available in Australia. If I want nearly any Australian native plant other than macadamias and lemon myrtle? There's a pretty good chance I'll have to grow them myself or go out actively foraging for them.

Indigenous Australian foodways have not received the half-hearted embrace that North and South American ones have by any metric, and arguing from the North American context in this matter is an argument from the most profound ignorance that I can only assume it comes from the mistaken belief that the foods of all Indigenous peoples are treated with the kind of ubiquitousness that those of America are. This is also why the response of 'well, don't bring up the country you're a settler on if you don't want it discussed' in response to 'America's experience does not apply in this context' is utter absurdity - they are so fundamentally different that it simply cannot be argued as valid.

Now, as to why this matters. Spreading an awareness of both traditional and modern Indigenous foodways accomplishes multiple goals. The first is cultural exchange on an even footing - food is the universal ambassador, and moving the foods of the marginalized to the centre creates opportunities for conversation not only verbally but through the non-combative medium of deliciousness; in doing so, the barriers between the dominant group and the subaltern can be loosened and non-contentious common ties ('dang, barbecue is delicious' and 'lamb and lemon myrtle works really well!', for instance) forged in preparation for tackling bigger issues. The second is the opportunity to create new recognition of the history of the places we live in and the lived experience of Indigenous peoples both now and in that history - something as simple as knowing how people used to come up my way in full clans for the bunya harvest, for instance.

The third, and most crucial, is the opportunity to restore lost foods to the landscape and the people they belong to (or, as it may also be considered, who belong to the foods), preferably with ownership of the farms/gathering operations belonging in Indigenous hands. Without this last element, the foodways are colonized, which is undesirable. But with it, the mere act of eating Australian becomes part of a bigger picture that erodes the colonial paradigm with every delicious bite. It is no coincidence that in America and Canada there is talk by Indigenous activists of various tribes of decolonizing foodways and diet (among a larger dialogue on food decolonization that, unfortunately, is largely part of the appropriation of the language of decolonization to refer to more generalized social justice efforts) as a component of restoring culture, land, and ultimately, sovereignty.

Even in the American context, sweet corn is not all that much like the maize most nations grew as a staple crop.

[loomer]

Even in the American context, sweet corn is not all that much like the maize most nations grew as a staple crop.

Very true, and itself part of why the push to decolonize foodways is important: Plants can take on the most remarkably useful forms given a bit of effort, and at present, that effort is denied many Indigenous foodstuffs here in Australia. We have no idea how cultivable, how delicious, how nutritious many of them may be with a few decades work - we may have the next sweetcorn or pumpkin sitting there somewhere, unknown, unloved, forgotten. Because our foodways and diet are colonial, and those who still consume traditional foodstuffs largely marginalized, we will never know unless we learn about, accept, and take an interest - as junior partners - in the local foodways.

EDIT:
Tying into this, one need only consider how livestock farming of European stock is utterly catastrophic to the Australian landscape. Our desire to retain a colonial identity and diet is, quite literally, killing large swathes of the ecosphere of the continent.

[Straha]

Loomer doing the deadly work in this thread.

Oh, by the way - "Bundjalung"

Now this is just silly. You seem to have decided the word Bundjalung in some way offends me, and that I don't like others using it. You're making a fool of yourself.

Indeed. The fuck was this bit?

Something that's at least a little racist.

[Straha]

It's not worth responding to him. He's an almost dictionary display of white privilege:

- Walking into a thread he doesn't understand and expecting to be understood as equal to people who have spent significant amount of time studying what's being discussed
- Ignoring posts in response to him that go into great detail, and responding to others with fortune cookie statements
- Really, just expecting other people to do intellectual labour for him
- Thinking "Well, this is complicated and I don't get it" is an argument. (Although, given what he understands in this thread I wonder what he actuallydoes get)
- Thinking that his discomfort with an idea, or its complication, is more compelling than what PoC experience
- And, of course, his obliviousness to the overt racist traditions of the historical events he cited

Given that it seems almost stubbornly willful, I'd hope to think he's just a troll playing a fratboyesque character. But I wouldn't make that bet.

Wrong jackass.

I did read your posts. Thing is the reasoning ignored various nuances and complexities that make all your suggestions childish and naive. You assume all the intertribal tensions will vanish when the us votes itself out of existence. Considering what happened with the Soviet Union and the Yugoslav and Balkan Wars that’s laughably naive

I brought up Haiti because you seemed to think that the mass murder of 3000-5000 men women and children was not important because the local blacks were fighting against people who had been brutalizing them. That’s disgusting. Being on the receiving end of abusive treatment doesn’t give you the right to exterminate the entire population you unbelievably stupid shit.

What other historical events are you talking about if not Haiti?

See, you do everything I mention in my post right here. Which makes this almost poetic. Really, if I thought you were a troll this would almost be high art.

Let's talk about the Haiti argument for a moment though.

• It starts off when I say that a violent revolution can represent a complete break between a Settler-Colonial state and a successor state. Broomstick asks for an instance of this happening and I offer Haiti.
• You respond asking if I support the massacre of (French) White Folk. Now, in the logical reasoning racket this is what's called a non-sequitur, because whether or not I support the massacre has no bearing on whether or not there was a complete break between the Settler-Colonial Haiti and the post-revolution Haiti.
• The question then is, why did you bring up the massacre if it has no bearing on the conversation? The most likely answer seems to be that it's a very old trope used in the U.S. from the time of the Haitian revolution down well into the 1900s to justify Slavery and Segregation. Black folk cannot be given power in the South, the argument went, because if they were given power there'd be a violent massacre of white folk by the revenge seeking oppressed.
• Interestingly, this conversation didn't go down the non-sequitur route, but rather under Effie's prodding went down a far more interesting route, one that explored how the racialized violence in Haiti fits neatly into the same frameworks of violence that the United States legalizes and deems legitimate. Something that even Broomstick seems to agree with now.
• Regardless, you were remarkably silent about that discussion as it occurred. One might think that this was because you were reading the thread and contemplating the answers, but your responses to loomer seem to indicate you don't read their posts at all and your response here seems to indicate that you didn't read the responses to the one contribution you made to this thread.
• This, BTW, begs all sorts of questions about why you view the U.S. as a legitimate agent of violence and Haiti as something where its very mention requires an immediate repudiation of the violence used, even now. To say that that discrepancy doesn't appear racially charged would be to lie.

So, this leaves us with the question. What are we to make of someone who cites racist tropes, can't be bothered to read or understand responses around him, and yet keeps shitposting to try and change the conversation to one that revolves around their racist tropes. Really, there are three options: You're either a troll, an idiot, or a racist.

I don't think you're the first one, not out of any real evidence but more because I believe that we should take people's statements sincerely in public media. The latter one, well... you know the saying, right? If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck it's probably a duck? Seems to fit, right? But I do think it's a bit harsh, and I like to give people the benefit of the doubt when there's another complete explanation. Finally, there's the idiot explanation. And really, it fits all the boxes. It explains why you don't seem to display reading comprehension of the thread, it explains why you don't understand when other people have thoroughly out-debated you, and it also explains the ego that lets you think that your fortune cookie contributions here are actually responses.

So, I'm going to go with that. And your post here is really just the icing on the proverbial cake in this regard given how everything in it was addressed in other posts and you've addressed none of those responses.

[Straha]

When I propose to White Folks, they freak out. They say that this will make it so that politics only represents Black folk and that would be bad, and they usually say it with a straight face which makes me think they don't grasp the irony. They offer all sorts of bluster about how this will hurt other minority groups (again, they say this unironically, which is shocking to me), and try to come up with visions of disaster and despair. Then they try and negotiate the representation down. It usually comes down to something like three extra votes for six years, and usually with all sorts of added restrictions on voting. All of which fundamentally misses the point of the thought exercise.

Yeah, you gotta raise the temperature slower if you wanna boil the frog. +1 vote every two elections up to 5, reverting to 1 in 2120. (20 years is far too short a period of time for the notoriously paralysed US legislature to make any real restorative changes anyway).

More seriously though, who gets to do voting is possibly less significant to restoring justice to the US electoral system, racial or otherwise, than who gets to spend money to influence voting.

Most of the power is already concentrated in an amazingly tiny percentage of the population because they control the means of transmission and the messages anyone is able to hear due to the concentration of capital wealth.

Fascinating. I discuss how after I propose this bargaining occurs to dilute the power and miss the point of the intellectual exercise, and immediately you engage in bargaining to dilute the power, miss the point (by vastly reducing the power being given), and then try to deflect from race based reparations in the democratic sphere to discussions of mainstream campaign finance reform.

See what I mean, Rogue?

[Vendetta]

When I propose to White Folks, they freak out. They say that this will make it so that politics only represents Black folk and that would be bad, and they usually say it with a straight face which makes me think they don't grasp the irony. They offer all sorts of bluster about how this will hurt other minority groups (again, they say this unironically, which is shocking to me), and try to come up with visions of disaster and despair. Then they try and negotiate the representation down. It usually comes down to something like three extra votes for six years, and usually with all sorts of added restrictions on voting. All of which fundamentally misses the point of the thought exercise.

Yeah, you gotta raise the temperature slower if you wanna boil the frog. +1 vote every two elections up to 5, reverting to 1 in 2120. (20 years is far too short a period of time for the notoriously paralysed US legislature to make any real restorative changes anyway).

More seriously though, who gets to do voting is possibly less significant to restoring justice to the US electoral system, racial or otherwise, than who gets to spend money to influence voting.

Most of the power is already concentrated in an amazingly tiny percentage of the population because they control the means of transmission and the messages anyone is able to hear due to the concentration of capital wealth.

Fascinating. I discuss how after I propose this bargaining occurs to dilute the power and miss the point of the intellectual exercise, and immediately you engage in bargaining to dilute the power, miss the point (by vastly reducing the power being given), and then try to deflect from race based reparations in the democratic sphere to discussions of mainstream campaign finance reform.

See what I mean, Rogue?

x20 votes for 20 years would be less total voting power than phasing up to x5 but maintaining it for 100 years (400:1 instead of 420:1), and would be too short a period to show serious effects. It would, in effect, only secure the next two presidencies and maybe tip the supreme court.

Anything shorter than 50 years has little to no chance of producing a lasting poltical reparation because of the paralytic slowness of the US system.

[Vendetta]

Additionally, gerrymandering is so easy in the US that it's possible no amount of extra votes over as short a period as 20 years would produce noticable legislative shift. It needs to be over a long enough period to allow the small initial changes to compound upwards and produce demographic change to shift more districts. A more effective solution would be to count historically suppressed people multiple times when it comes to drawing up districts and apportioning EC votes for as long as it takes to provide reparations, so that their increased vote share actually produces increased representation.

The electoral college is already designed to produce this specific effect, increasing the voice of minority populations along state lines, after all.

[Rogue 9]

What I'm talking about is fairly standard terminology in the field of settler studies and decolonization - your ignorance of it does not render it invalid.

I'm going to humbly suggest that if you intend to speak to laypeople about this, the use of highly field specific jargon is not helpful and in fact only serves to obscure meaning.

[Gandalf]

What I'm talking about is fairly standard terminology in the field of settler studies and decolonization - your ignorance of it does not render it invalid.

I'm going to humbly suggest that if you intend to speak to laypeople about this, the use of highly field specific jargon is not helpful and in fact only serves to obscure meaning.

On the other hand, if someone intends to speak on the subject, maybe someone should learn some of the key terms of the field?

Loomer doing the deadly work in this thread.

Now this is just silly. You seem to have decided the word Bundjalung in some way offends me, and that I don't like others using it. You're making a fool of yourself.

Indeed. The fuck was this bit?

Something that's at least a little racist.

So it's not just me.

[Straha]

x20 votes for 20 years would be less total voting power than phasing up to x5 but maintaining it for 100 years (400:1 instead of 420:1), and would be too short a period to show serious effects. It would, in effect, only secure the next two presidencies and maybe tip the supreme court.

Anything shorter than 50 years has little to no chance of producing a lasting poltical reparation because of the paralytic slowness of the US system.

Again, the bargaining remains interesting. As is the fact that while you insist that this is giving 'more' it doesn't meet the threshold of what's being offered: Giving descendants of slaves an absolute majority of votes. Even at the peak of what you're offering they would still be comfortable outvoted by the rest of the U.S. population.

And if you think bureaucracy is too slow for elections to be able to effectuate change, I think that begs some larger questions of what you imagine the utility of elections to be.

[Vendetta]

x20 votes for 20 years would be less total voting power than phasing up to x5 but maintaining it for 100 years (400:1 instead of 420:1), and would be too short a period to show serious effects. It would, in effect, only secure the next two presidencies and maybe tip the supreme court.

Anything shorter than 50 years has little to no chance of producing a lasting poltical reparation because of the paralytic slowness of the US system.

Again, the bargaining remains interesting. As is the fact that while you insist that this is giving 'more' it doesn't meet the threshold of what's being offered: Giving descendants of slaves an absolute majority of votes. Even at the peak of what you're offering they would still be comfortable outvoted by the rest of the U.S. population.

And if you think bureaucracy is too slow for elections to be able to effectuate change, I think that begs some larger questions of what you imagine the utility of elections to be.

Giving the descendants of slaves an absolute majority of votes in the way the US' electoral system is structured doesn't necessarily mean they have control over the output of the system. It would flip some districts very consistently, but probably not enough to generate a supermajority in the direction that population desired to vote in both houses (because they tend to vote Democrat and many of those districts are already going to the people they vote for without the weighting). And that would be the same no matter the factor by which the votes increase.

Increasing their voting power just enough to give them control over districts they live in but do not currently get their desired representation in for long enough that that control generates long term representation and locks in changes which benefit them to the point that they can actually begin to redress all the other inequalities of slavery would be a more effective way to produce restorative justice.

The system of government in the US is designed to be slow and ineffectual. When the states were first drawing up the design for a federal government none of them wanted to give it any power or money, it is incredibly difficult to introduce new legislation and incredibly easy to stall it out, or gut it. Even if that legislation is very popular with actual voters.

[Effie]

Well, I took a look at the data for Michigan, my own home state, and that's not really true. Under this model, 13/14 Michigan congressional districts would have a voteshare that would be more than 50% black, and while I don't really have the tools handy to perform a full statistical analysis, on a broad level this would almost certainly flip 6 Michigan House seats. Possibly a 7th. I then took a look at Ohio, and on a crude level, Ohio would flip between 6 and 7 of its House seats to Democrats. And Ohio would also go Dem in Presidential elections reliably. All 9 of Indiana's House seats would be Democratic under this system, and again it would go Dem in Presidential elections.

Iowa's 90% white, but if this system was in place, all five of its House seats would be determined by black votes. It would also be likely Dem in Presidential elections.

Kansas? 6% black overall, it would almost certainly go Dem every time. And it would send 3 or 4 Dem representatives to the House.

So, regardless of "no matter the factor by which the votes increase", the material reality is that the outcome would be, in first-order terms, a massive, crushing Democratic victory nationally that would reduce the Republican party to rump regional status, and this regional status could be massively weakened by extending a similar scheme to Native voters, who, after all, were largely denied citizenship until well into the 20th century too.

In second-order terms, this massive concentration of power in black people's hands would massively reshape the character of Congressional delegations, as moderate voting trends are largely driven by the need to rely on alliances with white voters, of whom moderate and conservative Democrats are more reliable. With the prospect of black independent majority power in many areas, this would mean in turn that the median Democratic representative would vote a lot more like, say, Debbie Dingell and radical power would become much more substantial.

And in turn, for Republicans to survive as a party, they would have to drastically alter themselves, or else hold faith in the idea that the country wouldn't be so fundamentally altered after 20 years that they could still compete in and win elections on the basis of crude racism.

[Effie]

Brief addendum: this would turn West Virginia into a solidly blue state in terms of Congressional and Presidential representation, the Republican regional stronghold would be absurdly tiny.

[loomer]

What I'm talking about is fairly standard terminology in the field of settler studies and decolonization - your ignorance of it does not render it invalid.

I'm going to humbly suggest that if you intend to speak to laypeople about this, the use of highly field specific jargon is not helpful and in fact only serves to obscure meaning.

If I were discussing this elsewhere, I'd refrain from using the specific terminology. However, I was under the - evidently mistaken - impression that members of this forum pride themselves on their ability to either use google or ask questions when engaging in discussions about things they aren't expert in. If anyone does need any of my terminology explained, I'm happy to either do it myself or point them to a suitably accessible article that does it better - they only have to ask - though perhaps preferably without accusing me of 'vomiting it across this forum' and following it up with an invective laden rant, as whatever explanation I give in such cases I cannot guarantee will come from a place of good faith.

[Rogue 9]

What I'm talking about is fairly standard terminology in the field of settler studies and decolonization - your ignorance of it does not render it invalid.

I'm going to humbly suggest that if you intend to speak to laypeople about this, the use of highly field specific jargon is not helpful and in fact only serves to obscure meaning.

If I were discussing this elsewhere, I'd refrain from using the specific terminology. However, I was under the - evidently mistaken - impression that members of this forum pride themselves on their ability to either use google or ask questions when engaging in discussions about things they aren't expert in. If anyone does need any of my terminology explained, I'm happy to either do it myself or point them to a suitably accessible article that does it better - they only have to ask - though perhaps preferably without accusing me of 'vomiting it across this forum' and following it up with an invective laden rant, as whatever explanation I give in such cases I cannot guarantee will come from a place of good faith.

It doesn't help that the field jargon of critical race studies tends to map to overwhelmingly inflammatory statements in common usage, for instance the last time this blew up it was over an apparent call for all white people to die, and it was not at all clear that what was meant was culture rather than people (if indeed that was what the author of the original article meant; I'm still not 100% convinced of that given he never said so himself). In instances such as that, sure, people could take to Google and figure it out if they knew explicitly what to look for and what parameters to use to narrow the search, but the more likely reaction is to take it at face value given that it doesn't appear to be technical jargon.

[loomer]

I'm going to humbly suggest that if you intend to speak to laypeople about this, the use of highly field specific jargon is not helpful and in fact only serves to obscure meaning.

If I were discussing this elsewhere, I'd refrain from using the specific terminology. However, I was under the - evidently mistaken - impression that members of this forum pride themselves on their ability to either use google or ask questions when engaging in discussions about things they aren't expert in. If anyone does need any of my terminology explained, I'm happy to either do it myself or point them to a suitably accessible article that does it better - they only have to ask - though perhaps preferably without accusing me of 'vomiting it across this forum' and following it up with an invective laden rant, as whatever explanation I give in such cases I cannot guarantee will come from a place of good faith.

It doesn't help that the field jargon of critical race studies tends to map to overwhelmingly inflammatory statements in common usage, for instance the last time this blew up it was over an apparent call for all white people to die, and it was not at all clear that what was meant was culture rather than people (if indeed that was what the author of the original article meant; I'm still not 100% convinced of that given he never said so himself). In instances such as that, sure, people could take to Google and figure it out if they knew explicitly what to look for and what parameters to use to narrow the search, but the more likely reaction is to take it at face value given that it doesn't appear to be technical jargon.

Perhaps so, but there are many such instances where inflammatory words have perfectly ordinary and acceptable uses in their fields and I don't think it's especially necessary or reasonable to expect, in a discussion about that area of knowledge and meaning formation, to avoid their use. Take 'settler moves to innocence' for instance - though I'm not sure if it even possesses an overwhelmingly inflammatory nature on its own. Just googling it takes you to the best article for an introduction to what they are, and they're easy enough to explain and to comprehend. Said article, as it happens, is very nice proof that trying to limit decolonization and settler colonial studies to national borders is a fool's game - it builds on the work of a Canadian woman of I believe primarily settler descent, is hosted in Australia, was published in a Canadian journal whose two editors are of varying Indigenous descent (one is Dine, the other is mixed Hupa, Yurok and Karuk) and work at American universities, was written by two American academics (one of Aleutian native background who also lives and works in Canada, and one of Asian settler origin), uses works written by people from across the world of both Settler and Indigenous stock (including, I note, Australians - for instance, the work of Patrick Wolfe) and all builds on the foundational work of a fellow of French West Indian descent who fought on both sides of the Algerian independence struggle.

[Straha]

Look, I'll be the first to admit that Afro-Pessimism (what that other thread ended up being about) can be tough to grok sometimes. Settler-Colonialism really isn't. And just googling the term turns up this article which is really quite good at explaining the concept. If someone can't be bothered to read that article then why should they be treated with any level of respect in this matter?

Edit: Seems Loomer and I were writing about the same article at the same time.

[Straha]

> Snip<

That is an awful lot of writing to basically say "Hey, 20 is bigger than 5." Kudos on you.

[loomer]

Look, I'll be the first to admit that Afro-Pessimism (what that other thread ended up being about) can be tough to grok sometimes. Settler-Colonialism really isn't. And just googling the term turns up this article which is really quite good at explaining the concept. If someone can't be bothered to read that article then why should they be treated with any level of respect in this matter?

Edit: Seems Loomer and I were writing about the same article at the same time.

Different articles, I'm afraid (Tuck and Yang for me, to be precise), but that goes to prove the point that the information is easily available.