Philosophical Question

Last week, I wrote about Minneapolis City Councilor Alondra Cano and Minneapolis NAACP president Nekima Levy-Pounds complaining about being “victims of racism” – Cano for having been criticized by her fellow councilpeople, Levy-Pounds for being scolded for ~~barging in and interrupting~~ giving public input at a Park Board meeting where public input was not on the agenda.

So I have to ask – is it even possible for…:

Cano, a senior member of a one-party political system that controls Minneapolis no les scompletely than the Stasi controlled East Germany, a woman who has the sort of power that mere citizens can’t possible imagine, a woman who is guaranteed a much-better-than-living-wage for the rest of her life, between the political system and the rent-seeking non-profit sector, even if she doesn’t run for mayor or the Legislature (as, rumor has it, she will), and accede to even more power and long-term wealth, and…
Levy-Pounds, a professor with tenure – she can never be fired from her job (unless Saint Thomas law school closes) who earns an upper-middle-class income and has the sort of social and political access that nobody in this audience does, a woman who can get Betsy Hodges and Chris Coleman to say “how high, ma’am?” when she says “Jump”

…to feel “racism” in any way that matters given their status as “One Percenters” in the social and political class diagram?

I say “that matters” because after a certain point, as the great African-American and arch-liberal columnist William Raspberry once said, at a certain point you have to realize racism is just ignorance, and beneath you. Given the power and status that the likes of Cano and Levy-Pounds have accreted, isn’t “racism” to them sort of like Erik Pusey criticizing my writing – it is irrelevant, and has no real, tangible impact on my interaction with the real world?

Posted

May 18, 2016

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Mitch Berg

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Alondra Cano

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11 responses to “Philosophical Question”

bikebubba

May 18, 2016

Well, you can’t touch her position or her power, but theoretically even someone who is relatively powerless could harass her to the point of relative insanity, no?

It is true that one ought to realize that certain idiocy really is meaningless, but boy oh boy is that hard to turn off! Really, the point you’re making is the converse of the old saw among civil rights activists (some of them at least) that a black person cannot be racist because he has no power. Um….no.
The Big Stink

May 18, 2016

So, when do we turn the tables and accuse the Heterophobes?
Bill C

May 18, 2016

Much like the rest of the professionally aggrieved, I think these two harpies’ screeching of racism has morphed from actually being negatively affected by it, to now recognizing that continuance of racism/racialization is necessary to maintain their quality of life, their social stature, and their political ambitions.

They’re no better than Sharpton or Jackson.
Chuck

May 18, 2016

Or was it sHillary or Obama?….said a couple of days ago that the nation’s largest corporations need to have more females and dark skinned people on their boards. So now we have affirmative action for the 1%. The ultra-wealthy who sit on the BOD for your 3M’s and WalMarts.
I’m guessing the black mother sitting in north Mpls or Baltimore is saying “damn, we need more African-Americans on the board of directors of Disney. That is what will make my life better”.
In The Mailbox: 05.18.16 : The Other McCain

May 18, 2016

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kel

May 18, 2016

Simply, Cano and Levy-Pounds do not have the substance or character to earn their way into the 1% and so insist that there be quotas established.
Jackson and Sharpton are fading from the scene and their absence will create a void in the race-whore rent-seeking world so players like Levy-Pounds are auditioning to fill that perceived need.
Bento Guzman

May 18, 2016

It’s Chinatown, Jake. These people are mad, they want power, and they have powerful allies.
Since the late 60s, the Dems have managed what is called a high-low coalition. The objective of a high-low coalition is to loot the middle of its privilege (however defined). Eventually, as we have seen in the cities they govern, they run of out people in the middle to exploit.
Don’t live in a place like that.
Bento Guzman

May 19, 2016

This is what they teach people in university Womens/Black/Hispanic/Queer studies courses.
Their identity as a Woman/Black.Hispanic/Queer is authentic. Everything else about them is what society has made them.
If they are a doctor or athlete or Christian or pet groomer, this is what society has made them. Only their group identity is authentic.
Society is controlled by people who are not in their group. This group of people, whites or white men or Europeans, has oppressed and exploited the members of their group to serve their own ends. They have even gone so far as to deny the fact that they are not authentically woman/Black/Hispanic/Queer. They do this by normalizing “white” behavior, which is also the behavior of your oppression.
This is madness. It requires a highly privileged Black person, who has white people subordinate to him or her, to believe that his or her white subordinates are the agents of his oppression. This is because all the members of the oppressing group are oppressors, and all the members of the oppressed group can not be other than oppressed.
This is why arguing that a powerful wealthy politician who is a woman/Black/Hispanic/queer is privileged will get you nowhere. It is impossible for him or her to be privileged because they do not belong to a privileged class.
And yes, I know it makes no sense. It doesn’t have to make sense. It only has to privilege themselves at the expense of others, and it works.
Bento Guzman

May 19, 2016

Should be:
“They have even gone so far as to deny the fact that they are authentically woman/Black/Hispanic/Queer.”
Bento Guzman

May 19, 2016

Since I am on a roll, here, I should mention that to the people on the fringe of all these movements and the mainstream of third-world ‘colonial’ studies types, the Oppressor (sometimes described as whites, sometimes as white men, and sometimes as Europeans), have no authentic identity other than as oppressors. At their core they can only be the oppressor class or race. They have no authenticity of their own.
Hence the ‘cultural appropriation’ nonsense, and the idea pushed by some extremists that the oppressor class (aka white people, especially white men) aren’t really human at all.
nerdbert

May 19, 2016

That Levy-Pounds will never complain about ‘cultural appropriation’ is my bet. After all, her sweet gig is at an institution that arose out of a white, male, and Christian source.