Author: Brynn

In the Betray white fathers podcast, Phoebe talks about white supremacy and finds out that its taking place so close to her hometown. Personally, i found that part interesting because the town of Quindaro is a part of history but it seems that the way that society works and because it revolves around whiteness that its actually trying to erase it. Quindaro is an abolitionist town. The town was an outlier because it was a place where whites, native Americans and freed African Americans could all live together in peace. Because of the way our society operates, the town id “hidden” since they don’t want people to actually find out that other individuals actually lived like this and supported those ideas. 

When Phoebe says that john browns narrative is changed, he is marked as crazy because what he believed in was not considered the norm of society and it needed to fit in with what other white individuals believe in. This idea reminded me of some of the other readings we did, more specifically, Peter woods work and the 1619 project. In general, i feel that this story speaks for itself, since history about the town is not taught in schools even though it was so close to where she grew up. 

Another connection that i found between this article and the White Culture description is in part 3. The one that says white culture assigns a higher value to some ways of behaving then others. Then those other behaviors are considered dangerous or deviant. This reminds me of the good/bad binary for some reason because it has to do with one’s behavior (one good and one bad in terms of racist or not racists), almost like living by unwritten rules in order to navigate society.

I can relate more to the calling out ableism piece since I do have a chronic illness that is not noticeable. Originally, I was not sure why this was included but it makes sense that it was since it is discrimination against a specific group based on disability status. Replace disability status with the word race and we can see how similar they are.

Before even reading this article on White Fragility, what i first thought of was that its hard to talk to white people about racism because most think they aren’t racist or do not recognize their role in it. On the anthropological side of things, we created racism. The racial hierarchy keeps getting recreated as the interests of whites then become the foundation of our society. This article puts an emphasis on group power relations in order to understand how racism functions. 

I liked that the author listed the patterns. and explained in detail how they contribute to the difficulty of white people to understand racism as a system and how that then leads to white fragility. In one of those patterns, the one on whites being more valuable, that I think related back to the other reading/podcast on Bretaying white fathers since, like how a town of mixed races (white, native American and black) is forgotten.  It is also left out of history books and not taught in schools because it does not conform to the society that white supremacy is rooted in. Colored people are left out in many ways, while white people are the main center of attention and focus (just look at the list in the article). 

In the readings that we did for today, some of the events I knew about and others I did not. So I felt that, especially for the Reparations piece, that really gave a personal perspective for what it was like living under laws of segregation. It wasn’t just a bunch of dates with descriptions of events, it actually gave us a real idea of how those people were living at the time. 

In the reading “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack”, I thought that the concept was interesting that the author chose to show how white privilege was apparent in her life. Some of the things she said I did not quite agree with, but thats because these are specific to her life and not to mine. Like her, I am also a white woman, and this piece made me reflect in my own way on how white privilege is present in my own life. One of the ways that the effects of white privilege comes up in her life, specifically, the one about turning on the television or opening a news paper and seeing people of her own race widely represented, bothered me. 

Maybe her race is widely represented but does that mean that other people of color arent there or shes just doesnt see them. Personally if I turn on the tv i see people of all different races represented. But thats just me. It definitely depends on what your watching or what you are reading (newspaper or magazine). 

I thought that the bird watching article was interesting because the act of bird watching so peaceful and simple, could get turned into something its not and this aggravated me. I remember on the news when they did a story on the African American man bird watching, who confronted a lady about her unleashed dog, ended up getting the cops called on him. What is interesting is I’ve seen this scenario or similar ones take place on tv shows. Seeing something on television makes it seem unreal or not likely to happen in real life and then when it does, it becomes a whole debate. The part when the women explained how racists individuals believe that this is their land and because they own it, and that someone of color does not belong there is definitely rooted in white privilege and colonialism. 

Colonialism not talked about in this article but I think that there is a connection to it since this article reminded me of how native Americans were kicked off of their lands, not treated fairly in treaties or flat out ignored. The concept of reparations could also be linked to this as well since native Americans have been fighting to get their land back for years that was unfairly taken from them by whites. 

These themes are also present in the article about the black runner who was unjustly killed by a father and son pair while on a run. I think that fear does play its part in racism as it is talked about in the article when the author says that Americans dont realize that its scary for those individuals that they are claiming to be violent criminals. White individuals are only thinking about their own fear and not the fear of the one that they are accusing. 

I did not know that linguistic racism was a thing and that it existed but after reading that short piece on the matter it clearly is and is most definitely a problem in classrooms that needs to be addressed. 

The reparations reading I thought brought together past present and future since it talked about the past and how it affected those people and then how those people rallied in order to make changes to help better their futures and the lives of their families. The black movement from the south to the north because they were looking for protection under the law, however, what they got was laws that wrote them out completely and separated them from the rest of society. The fact that African Americans could not get a mortgage even if they were free just does not make sense to me. In that freedom that they desired was a place to call home for their families and the Fair Housing Act was supposed to fix all that and get rid of redlining. Before that, there was t overcrowding in certain communities because African Americans only had very few options when it came to housing because of redlining and segregation, but even after the passing of the act, the damage was already done. 

After talking about the Nietzism aspect of Mark’s readings that we read from last week, that helped me better understand the concept and connect his ideas with Josh’s in how they were either similar or different. From what I got from our talk in class is that Josh Mitchell does agree with Mark that there is a relationship between Christianity and identity politics. 

What I liked about the reading we did for class this week was how Josh Mitchell started talking about what an identity is first, before he even got into explaining identity politics. I also liked how he talked about inheritance and how in American society we kind of went from talking about inheritance and then that changed to identity. He provided two explanations for identity. The first one is that identity refers to “kind” and how it went from something unstable to stable.the second version is a more radical meaning of the word which is that it evolved into the specification of a relationship. In the way he described it, it makes me think of how people have relationships with each other such as owing a debt (which he uses as an example). In this way, the second meaning of identity is where we see the transgressor and innocent victim relationships emerge. The victimhood aspect of identity politics somewhat reminded me of what Gad Saad talked about in his book the parasitic mind. 

How each political party responded to identity politics is also quite interesting. The Republican party defends ideas on market commerce and tradition (going against marxism and progressivism). I believe he is saying that identity politics gets rid of the physical aspects of payment that the republican party believes in through working you will receive payment. 

The gist is that the republican party doesn’t like identity politics but the democratic party does. 

The whole mercy and justice correlation were interesting as well since mercy can supplement justice but can not be the substitute for it. 

The way that Riley explained how identity politics is connected to Christianity made it more clear to me. The ideas of transgressions and moral purities come from Christianity. When the world is created by a pure entity, God, out of that we get humans who make wrong decisions (transgressions) and sins emerge. Sins are then become permanent stains on human beings. How they can rectify the moral good is by becomes an issue. However, God solves the issue in a supernatural way by creating another supernatural being that then beings the scapegoat and pays all the debts for the sinners in the community. 

I’m not very religious but I know the basics so sometimes its nice to get a reminder on how it works. 

Josh Mitchell is interested in how the western world thinks on western problems. There is a hint of Christianity there even though we do not even realize it. Therefore Christian foundations become inescapable since they become entangled with cultural discourses and affect the way that members of society think about things

I thought that Joshua Mitchell posed an interesting phenomenon of a world where transgressors were gone entirely. He framed a question of can the innocents be innocent without transgressors? After one purge takes place and white heterosexual males are gone then another group of transgressors ultimately will take their place and the cycle keeps repeating itself until the last identity group is reached. This group then takes on the stance of the innocent victim only to actually be using just enough power to scapegoat and urge its transgressor.

I personally liked the concepts in the power and purity readings from Mark Mitchell. They really made me think hard about Nietzsche’s theories and concepts. I thought the opening that he chose was perplexing since I do remember when the California congresswomen publicly told people to harass members in trumps cabinet on the news. Its one thing to hold up signs and do a peaceful protest while someone is giving a speech but harassing people in the public domain while their not in work (such as a restaurant) is going way too far. 

All of these examples that Mark Mitchell provides only strengthen the ideas of Nietzsche. Politics is definitely mixing with everyday life. 

When Mitchell says “we have lost faith in the very ideals that made us who we were.” that got me thinking about the constitution since even though its outdated those are our ideals and people keep saying we need to change them. We may have talked about this concept in the Wood reading from last week in class. Mitchell goes on to say that America is a Puritan at its heart.

I thought that the Nietzschean will to power concept was interesting and how he links it to Puritanism and Christianity.  The ideas of truth, or how we once thought about it reminded me of some of the concepts that Gad Saad talked about in his book. 

When Nietzsche declared that God was dead in the sense that the idea of God was no longer plausible, I did not quite know what to think, but it started to make more sense the further i got into the reading. If I’m understanding this correctly, Nietzsche believes that life is the will to power and not the will to truth (and the will to morality plays a part in that). 

A question that I had was since Nietzsche saw Christianity and Christian morality as the mortal enemies of life itself, Why was that the case? Was it because the ideals of Christianity are confining and therefore not allowing our liberal democratic society to produce the one powerful individual who will ascend above everyone else? (then again liberal institutions are confining for those reasons (page 47) 

Other connections that I made from the other readings were on victimhood and the 1619 project, one talked about in Gad’s book and the other in Peter Wood’s book. I also thought the concept of identity politics since Mitchel describes it as a politics that unites to divide. 

(page 54)

After reading the sections of Peter Wood’s book on the 1619 project, it made me think about our conversations of truths in class and also on the other readings that we have done. Woods shares the same upholding the truth idealogy that Saad’s book does and questions things that just are simply not correct (or supported by no evidence). Something that I found interesting (maybe that relates to what we talked in the beginning of the semester on Culture of Critical Discourse) was that the Times published the project even though a lot of the theories that were posed were questionable since they did not line up with historical facts. What is more prominent is that even when confronted on the issue, the New York Times simply said it was up to someone’s own interpretation and that history it is all a matter of interpretation. 

Another thing that bugged me was that even when the Times brought in a second opinion to check Hannah-Jones’s assertion, they still ran with it. If the first fact checker wants to bring in outside help and that outside help (Leslie M. harris) completely discredits it, saying its false, then why not change it? The whole situation actually makes me angry because this news platform is supposed to provide reliable information and not false statements. This then makes me question what is actually true and what is not. 

Wood says that when the Times says its all a matter of interpretation is a postmodern claim. I like that he goes into detail about postmodernism and what its role is in the 1619 project. Postmodernism, how I understood it from the reading is that it favors people who are oppressed. 

An overall question I have is: does this mean that Postmodernism, those ideas and skepticism that its producing is shaping the whole 1619 project/movement? 

As I am also doing the book review for this book I thought I would take this opportunity to do a blog post on the other chapters since I figured I would keep my opinion out of the review. The last three chapters talked about various things including religion, hatred of jewish individuals, toy preferences (which we talked about in class with him) and many other topics. He has a whole section in one of the chapters of Nomological networks of cumulative evidence which it thought was pretty interesting and that’s where the toy preferences example came up. However he also talks about Islam using the nomological network of cumulative evidence and after reading that section along with other sections that talked about Islam in some way shape or form, it seems to me that he believes that terrorists (which are muslim) become that way because they practice Islam. (he’s basically saying that its the religion that makes them violent and commit terrorists acts) 

I’m just gonna leave it at that….

After reading sections from Gad Saad’s book, and having him talk about it with us in class, i feel that he did a great job explaining the concepts he was talking about by giving hard evidence of them. For example, in class we talked about victimology (I thought that whole section was interesting) and he gave examples of people who did studies and then when those studies did not provide the results they wanted they took on a victimhood stance. Two examples that I remember from the reading Gad also brought up in class which was the one where Israelis were dehumanizing the Palestinians because they were not raping them and then the other was the graduate student who wore a hijab for a certain number of days and even though everyone was nice to her during that time she still kept her thesis the same and said that people were overly nice as a why to compensate for their “concealed bigotry.” (page 111) 

The last of these two stood out to me because it seems people think that other people have hidden agendas or something which would mean that they are mixing their emotions with their ability to think rationally about something. Thinking that people have hidden agendas would assume that that person would have some diabolical intent or something like that. 

The whole concept of ideological pathogens I found to be quite interesting. 

This is only the 2nd time in my bucknell career (that I can remember) that i have had a guest speaker come and talk in the class that was NOT associated with the school.  This also makes me ask questions of why is that the case? Since bringing in outside professionals or professors from other schools makes class more engaging since students get to ask basically any range of questions they want (including uncomfortable topics). 

Going off of what i mentioned earlier, i did like that he did a good job explaining things but that does not mean that i agree with everything he was talking about.

In the “road to hell chapters” that we read for class, it seemed like it was more of a personalized experience and a detailed extension of what we read for last class) The reason why is because it follows the lives of two people, one black and the other white and even though their livelihoods were very different they were actually very similar and passionate about the same things. They had the same communist world view (3) and trying to gain the approval of their fathers. I found this interesting since in order to gain their approval they are basically confining themselves to those set of values and standards set by family. They were brothers in a movement that believed they could change the world through violent revolution (3) and it was their generation that was going to do that. This reminded me of the other reading we did for last class on the black student movement where that generation was going to start the revolution and do the things that their fathers could not. For George in particular, his mother was confining him because she worried about his safety so in this way she is so scared to step outside of her comfort zone and will do anything to protect her kid (even moving him to a new school and not letting him play outside in the street). 

The way that Steve and others idolized George reminded me of the reading from week 6 by Hollander. We talked a lot in class about idolizing ones heroes when we were discussing the soviet union and communism.

There were lots of instances in this reading where i had to stop and consider a bigger picture point of view such as what is really going on here socially? In general, it was interesting to see the roles reverses in that Steve gets peat up as a privileged white man but its because he is working with black individuals as a civil rights worker a part of a movement, a movement that not everyone is happy about. 

Another part that I thought was interesting was when steve was thinking about how whites would choose to follow the black movement and if they would do it without questioning what was going on. “In the whites attempt to belong” this part connects to the intellectuals who would align themselves to the working class since they did not like their own class or associated negative connotations with it, particularly, the french intellectuals. The working class was considered by french intellectuals to be a whole working community and therefore they had a pure idealization of the working class. which is connected to what I was talking about earlier with idealizing one’s heroes. 

For the reading that focuses on the student movements in the sixties, I immediately saw continuing themes from the last readings. The phrase agents of social or agent of transformation was brought up when the author was talking about C. Wright Mills, since he was relying on the intellectuals to be those agents of social change. (389) other phrases that I found in this reading were ‘makers of history” which I believe that was one of the principles of Marxism 

The concept of anti-Americanism is continued in this chapter, which we also talked a lot about in the previous class, that essentially anti Americanism is communism (Soviet Union) and anyone who favors that mentality. Intellectuals gravitate towards communism due to the alienation of their own society, that they feel they dont have a place in. 

In the reading, it says that the black student movement was a generational revolt. I had never thought of it in that way, but as I was asking myself why that was the case, later in the reading it said that the educated minority now had the means to “fight back” unlike the previous generation, who did not. 

In the section about martyrdom, that part at the end that says “there was the students alienation from the world..”(399) that connected intellectuals to the black led student movements (intellectuals are students)