It's Not Okay To Be White In Saskatoon
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As foretold by the hacker known as 4chan, the prophecy is fulfilled:
As foretold by the hacker known as 4chan, the prophecy is fulfilled:
Earlier this week, an identical poster was taped to the University of Alberta’s Native Studies building, and in Boston, Cleveland, and Maryland in the U.S.
Kaye took a photograph of the Saskatoon poster, then took it down and threw it into a nearby trash bin. He called his wife, who said it was terrible. Someone later asked him for the photo of the sign and shared it online.
He considers the posters a kind of trickery, Kaye said in an interview.
“The slogan’s appearance is part of a current, coordinated attempt by white supremacists to hijack Canada’s foundational, liberal democratic belief in equality, human rights, and multiculturalism to gain support from the majority population of Canadian life who doesn’t see how structural inequalities or basic Imperial history has shaped the western world, even into our little corner in supposedly peaceful and polite Canada,” he wrote in a Facebook comment.
“Racism is a slow-moving beast,” Kaye said, adding that in today’s world, these sorts of things tend to happen on the Internet, but it was disturbing to see it brought to the real world.
If putting it up was an act of propaganda, then “taking it down is an equal step,” he said. “I guess I can only hope to keep doing the right thing.”
posted by Winston Smith at
12:55 PM
9 Comments:
Honestly, why has it taken it this long for people to think of such an easy takedown of PCs? They've been festering in the academy for decades, and no one could simply think to ask them in public whether they thought it was ok to be white?
4chan'ers are generally assholes, but it is important to understand that assholes (and jesters) actually do have a very useful social function. They are the only people who can speak the truth in the face of overwhelming social censure. This is exhibit A. If you see a movement trying to get rid of all assholes, be very wary of what will come next.
Um. It's surely some kind of fallacy to conclude 'it's not okay to be white' from someone taking exception to signs posted by *actual white supremacists.*
Anon,
Yeah, dunno why it's taken so long to think of this... We don't think like 4chan...perhaps to our shame...
"4chan'ers are generally assholes, but it is important to understand that assholes (and jesters) actually do have a very useful social function. They are the only people who can speak the truth in the face of overwhelming social censure. This is exhibit A. If you see a movement trying to get rid of all assholes, be very wary of what will come next."
But *are* they assholes? I can't tell. They've taken a kind of deadpan humor to a point at which I can't separate seriousness from trolling.
I used to tacitly assume they were assholes...now I'm not so sure. But, as you say: even if they are, assholes can play an important social function.
Perhaps it's why I'm able to say some of the things I do when much nicer people are, apparently, too nice to even think them...
I think in a purely descriptive sense, 4chan'ers are definitely assholes. They are people who deliberately try to irritate normative members of society, and get a kick out of that. The problem is there is a connotation to asshole that is not always situationally correct. It is actually useful, and in fact good, to be an asshole in that sense now, because the norm is ridiculous.
And that is why asshole-ry evolved socially, as a sort of insurance against the development of ridiculous norms. They mostly extract premiums during good times, in the form of irritating antics that everyone must tolerate, but when things get rough, society can greatly benefit when they are the only ones remaining who are able to confront how ridiculous things are.
Just an aside, but liberals (or Blue tribe people to be simplistic), tend to be very agreeable in a psychometric sense. That also means that they tend to be very turned off by assholery, and I think its really hard to deny that this has played a part in why these PC games have become dominant. By allowing the academy to basically become a Blue Tribe stronghold, an uncomfortable side effect was that it almost entirely destroyed the asshole/contrarian-immune system that keeps things sane.
That is *extremely* interesting
If you see a movement trying to get rid of all assholes, be very wary of what will come next.
Agreed. 'First they came for the assholes, but I said nothing, because I am not an asshole...'
I think much of what's said above about assholes applies a fortiori to satirists and satirically-inclined comedians (obviously there's a big overlap with assholes here). Every society needs its Aristophanes, its Rabelais, Cervantes, Swift,... But who is the current model? Chris Rock? Louis C K?
>Agreed. 'First they came for the assholes, but I said nothing, because I am not an asshole...'
That is humorous.
Though, actually, you kind of are. But *I'm* not...
"I think much of what's said above about assholes applies a fortiori to satirists and satirically-inclined comedians (obviously there's a big overlap with assholes here). Every society needs its Aristophanes, its Rabelais, Cervantes, Swift,... But who is the current model? Chris Rock? Louis C K?"
I deliberately didn't include them because satirists/comedians are often tolerated because they are funny (although the 4channers in this case fit that bill pretty well, the "It's ok to be white" thing is pretty darn funny). Makes them much less of a canary in the coal mine (because humor softens the blow), and also it makes them less useful insurance, because they are often more intertwined with the consensus than they might want to admit.
Winston: LOL I was going to include a qualification to the effect that you might differ with me on my status re: being an asshole.
Weirdly, though, you got it exactly backwards!
Anon: Right. One complication here is that being funny is not entirely independent of being right; cf 'It's funny because it's true'. With satire, being onto something seems strictly necessary.
4channers who are funny presumably are satirists, but you're right that there is an issue here about professional comedians. I sometimes feel that Louis, for example, engages in subtle, probably not conscious signalling in his remarks about 'privilege' etc, for all his (largely accurate, I think) self-conception as honest and uninhibited.
Fortunately there are forms of satire that thrive on self-concealment, as wth Lear's Fool and Eastern Bloc humor. I've come across a kind of deadpan trolling in comment threads on PC philosophy blogs that belongs to this tradition.
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