It's odd - the recent flap here in the US about LA Clippers owner Donald Sterling focused exclusively on the racist comments he made to his girfriend, while all but ignoring that fact that the point of those comments was to tell her whom she could and could not pose with for photos. Not only that, but the NBA had the opportunity to bounce this turkey 10 years ago during a sexual harassment complaint against him, but passed. The NBA's "ban", meanwhile, is a joke. He can't be forced to sell, and the only real effect of it is to remove him from the public eye - in other words, to prevent his neanderthal views from deterring fans from buying tickets, cable TV viewing packages, and shirts with NBA team logos. Even worse, many of the women who achieve positions of power do it following the male playbook. We need, as I'm sure @Wreybies would say, a different paradigm.
@EdFromNY : The NBA, American football and college misogynyst and rape culture are astonishing, when viewed from the outside. I think what is striking about America is that it both encourages free speech and enables even the most disgusting views to have equal standing with the enlightened ones. So you have WBC and Gloria Steinam, Noam Chomsky and the Nazi Party, the FBi profilers and the biggest internet paedophile rings, you are at the forefront of protecting women's rights while allowing a significant social platform for ultra-conservative views. I think the issues gets muddled from there, because those who enforce antisocial views as a matter of personal freedom inevitably take advantage of the liberal culture so you end up basically neutralising a lot of the progress because one gets stifled by the other. Misogyny is aggressive and you know that the most aggressive people and policies somehow always win in the end, at least with the lowest common denominator.
Has anyone here read this book? http://www.amazon.com/dp/0465083617/?tag=postedlinks04-20 It's written by a Black clinical psychologist, and it's about racial identity development. The chapter on white racial identity development is particularly interesting, because as white people we generally don't think of ourselves as having racial identities. We tend to thing of our identities as normal. In group discussions for example, when mixed race groups are asked to write down salient features of their identities, people of color tend to write "I am ____" (enter race), whereas white people tend never to identify white as an important part of who they/we are. The book is really eye opening and I recommend it to everyone in this thread.
@jazzabel - we are, quite simply, sliding backwards. There are moneyed elites who keep the pot boiling and the masses distracted. And the masses lose more ground every year.
@EdFromNY : It's sad that the 'elites' haven't learned anything from the past. All that's gonna happen in the end is the Precariat revolution, and the ultra mega giga rich will count themselves lucky if all they end up loosing is their illegally amassed wealth. It always intrigues me how some people don't understand the concept of boundaries. So they push and push until they push others (and inevitably themselves) over the edge.
I consider that to be a defeatist political position. There are ways to get involved in movements that restructure society in a more just way. Getting money out of politics, the redistribution of wealth, divestment campaigns (ie fossil fuel industry). The change we'd probably all want is slow and can't happen overnight but the more people involved the better. I've burnt out on activist work recently, but I get frustrated when I see how many people never even got involved to begin with. I think that most people are just following a momentum of behavior when they assume no political responsibility and do nothing but complain or just "like" things on facebook. The world isn't going to look anything like how we want if we just analyze it and negatively judge powerful individuals and institutions. A more proactive approach is organizing together to replace unjust structures with better ones, and there are examples of that happening everywhere.
And on that note, there are people who are doing deliberately labeled "antiracist" work, and you can learn more and get involved: http://www.antiracistalliance.com/
Dude, my country got bombed illegally and against the UN resolution, with tonnes of depleted uranium. In 1999. The whole Europe watched without a word, in fact they participated and shared the spoils. Twenty years down the line, not one person stands convicted even though the cancer rates in bombed areas have increased by 400%. I don't have a defeatist position at all, I've just seen what brute force does to society and world politics. The international law is the law of the strongest, and we are seeing it right now again in the matter of Syria and Ukraine. I watched UK get involved in war after war, against the wishes of the majority of the population, whilst violently quashing anti-war demonstrations on the city streets. And people still went to work the next day, while innocent civilians died somewhere else. We are living the paradigm 'anything we want we get, and we cannot want what we can't get'. 'Getting involved' is allowed, or effective, only on low-level issues, it's an amusement to the masses, giving them a sense of hope, whilst in the background is all business as usual. ps. I do agree though that art powerfully influences the collective subconscious and, over time, affects the change, so I'm not saying it's pointless. But many lives come and go before these slow shifts occur.
It's ok I'm just trying to say there are levels of awareness, levels of power, and there's a lot of 'Brave New World' about what we are living through in the West. But it's all the same tactic, how to get people to accept that some things they simply can't influence. Patriarchy mastered that skill well too, which is why we are still unable to get rid of it, even though majority of people would be glad to see it gone.
We just disagree about whether people have the power to influence power structures. I think people do have that power. Anti-war demonstrations are just one tactic, and one you brought up that didn't work in your particular case. Sometimes representative democracy works, sometimes non-violent direct action works, sometimes boycotts and divestment works, sometimes nothing works. It depends on how you define the problem, and how well you organize around solutions. If your belief is that art will change enough peoples' minds over time then that's a tactic too. That was originally where I was coming from until I felt it wasn't enough, so I became an organizer. Now I'm burnt out on that and getting back into art (with no actual purpose to change the world, just because it makes me feel good and maybe it will make some money if I'm lucky).
People can change the system. You have to work at it, whatever change you want in the world. If you are really inspired to do it, you can do it.
People can change the system, but the odds these days are getting a lot longer. Unaccountable entities - corporations, mostly - control an enormous amount of what we see and hear. An increasing portion of our media is given to entertain, distract and misinform. And technology makes media increasingly pervasive. People obsess about having the latest app, the latest toy. Job erosion? Income inequality? Wars? Human rights? Not so much.
Well then if you were to start organizing then you might want to organize around media reform. Freepress started doing that only a few years ago. I'm not sure what successes they've had and will have, but you can get involved: http://www.freepress.net/about
Sorry if this was repeated earlier in the thread, but I imagine if one grew up their entire lives being told by the media that they're not good enough because they don't 'fit' with what the media thinks is beautiful/good, it would do quite a damaging number on their self-esteem. Worse still if their own family and community feel the same way. Who can you trust, then?
