Burning Books

This article got me to thinking about the all important discourse this country is going through in its efforts to address what might be the last round of racial dominance of white males:

Georgia college students burned the books of a Latina author - CNN

Clearly the classroom was "triggered" as the discussion centered on the very meaning of identity and freedom to act without undue restraint.

In my opinion, the discussion of race has become one which requires people to understand themselves more as a part of a greater, sometimes unaware and unconscious group, in ways that threaten their sense of fairness and equality. We haven't yet found the right language to communicate across this divide for many people although I am sure there is Star Trek episode or animated motion picture or two that addresses this.

It's been going on for years.
Didn't irate Christians burn Beatle records when John Lennon said something like, "We're bigger than Jesus"

Huh.....based upon her talk, the book seems most grillworthy.
White folk who deny they're white, & who lecture white people
about white privilege. Who on Earth needs that?

Btw, burning things is political/social/religious commentary, eg, books,
flags, bras. It's not always about Hitler (mentioned in the article).

sealchan said:

In my opinion, the discussion of race has become one which requires people to understand themselves more as a part of a greater, sometimes unaware and unconscious group, in ways that threaten their sense of fairness and equality. We haven't yet found the right language to communicate across this divide

Click to expand...

We've found exactly the wrong way to communicate across this divide: "white privilege"

Revoltingest said:

Huh.....based upon her talk, the book seems most grillworthy.
White folk who deny they're white, & who lecture white people
about white privilege. Who on Earth needs that?

Btw, burning things is political/social/religious commentary, eg, books,
flags, bras. It's not always about Hitler (mentioned in the article).

Click to expand...

It isnt about white people per se IMO but what happens when any culture or identity enjoys a systemic advantage. But how do you tell a poor struggling privileged person that they need to make room for someone else? Clearly that doesnt seem like equality.

I agree that the reference to Nazi book burning was unfair and that book burning could be a reasonable form of political expression. In South Africa Gandhi had Indian citizens of Great Britain, burn their special ID papers that had to have as non-whites.

Revoltingest said:

Btw, burning things is political/social/religious commentary, eg, books,
flags, bras. It's not always about Hitler (mentioned in the article).

Click to expand...

I think the article referenced this event:

Augustus said:

We've found exactly the wrong way to communicate across this divide: "white privilege"

Click to expand...

Yeah there are plenty of white people who cannot reasonably claim to be privileged. It may be time for race identity politics to fan out into class identity and address race in more focused sectors like law enforcement where it is more obvious.

I also like bias training and we need more effort at getting people to understand their own personalities better (MBTI) and how to stop projecting their own psychological type onto others.

We need to become more sophisticated in our psychological self-awareness if we want to continue to grow and thrive our diverse cultures together. Unfortunately, psychology is like new new religion or politics, a dirty word for a contentious topic.

Stevicus said:

I think the article referenced this event:

Click to expand...

I counter with this article...

Gandhi and the burning of passes | South African History Online

So is it cultural appropriation of a white male embraces the philosophy of Martin Luther King?

We have let political and social activism turn us into a culture that values virtue signalling over actual virtue.

sealchan said:

In my opinion, the discussion of race has become one which requires people to understand themselves more as a part of a greater, sometimes unaware and unconscious group, in ways that threaten their sense of fairness and equality. We haven't yet found the right language to communicate across this divide for many people although I am sure there is Star Trek episode or animated motion picture or two that addresses this.

Click to expand...

The thing is, as a society, we never really addressed this problem honestly. This is because there were some who still wanted to maintain a class hierarchy and vast disparities in wealth, while still giving off the pretense that they're addressing issues of race and gender equality (the focal point of identity politics)

The ironic thing about it is, that instead of judging people as individuals or by the content of their character, people are still lumped into the same groups, typically by race and gender.

Even if we attempt to be "righteous" about it and declare that everyone is "equal" (not that that actually makes it happen automatically), it still has the same effect of grouping people into their own particular collective based on superficial, generalized criteria. This also tends to lead to "othering" those outside of that collective.

Among white people, there has been an ongoing and prevailing tendency to use the collective pronoun "we" to describe many of the events of US and world history, such as all the things "we" did here on the North American continent (and elsewhere). Whole generations have been raised with this notion, so it shouldn't be any great surprise that it's going in the direction that it's going.

As far as finding the right language to communicate across these divides, it's not that we haven't found it. The problem is that it would be too dangerous to the existing order to actually use it, since it would mean openly declaring all humans to be equal and all part of a singular, world-wide collective, without a class hierarchy or disparities in wealth.

As for Star Trek, one episode which comes to mind is "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield," but in that episode, both the oppressor and the oppressed were both villains in their own way. They were both consumed with hatred for "the other."

Another example from popular culture might be "The Sneetches" by Dr. Seuss. In the end, it didn't matter who had stars and who didn't, since they recognized that they were all pretty much the same. That might be the right language to use, but who's going to use it and practice it consistently?

Reading the actual article, I see the classic hostility that arises when we're talking about relative privilege. To a member of a minority group, even being white (and male) gives people an advantage and they can prove it. Those who are white and male but not privileged compared to the plutocrats and super-wealthy who pay less taxes than the middle class, resent their position as well also for decent reasons.

I'd also note that if this were a conservative author on a liberal campus, the right would be ranting and foaming at the mouth about liberal dominance and so forth. But of course it's different when it's conservative students.

Also, the students had an opportunity to engage in a real discussion rather than attack the author and her works. Outside the conflict loving media, I could dream of a headline about a meaningful discussion of privilege between the author and the students.

Instead, of course, we had a book burning.

sealchan said:

Yeah there are plenty of white people who cannot reasonably claim to be privileged. It may be time for race identity politics to fan out into class identity and address race in more focused sectors like law enforcement where it is more obvious.

I also like bias training and we need more effort at getting people to understand their own personalities better (MBTI) and how to stop projecting their own psychological type onto others.

We need to become more sophisticated in our psychological self-awareness if we want to continue to grow and thrive our diverse cultures together. Unfortunately, psychology is like new new religion or politics, a dirty word for a contentious topic.

Click to expand...

Ultimately, all socioeconomic and political "privilege" boils down to who has the wealth and power, and what they're doing to make sure they keep it for themselves. In many cultures this animus tends to run along racial and ethnic lines, but not always. Sometimes it runs along religious, historical, and even geographical lines, too.

But here in the U.S. it tends to run along a complicated combination of these, which is why various groups have become so fiercely protective (defensive) about their own claim to any position in the privileged classes. And with so much competition, it becomes about more than just wealth and power. It becomes about one's innate value as a human being. And this is such an important and powerful desire/drive in us that politicians, commercial interests, the media, religion, all are playing on and into it for their own advantage, and thus are stirring up the intensity levels of it significantly. How many country songs on the radio are now touting the glory of being "country"; meaning that the singer's value as a human being is intrinsically linked to their identification with this certain class/sub-culture of Americans? Or how many "Christians" are defining their value before God by their identification with this specific sub-category of a religious sect? And now we are even connoting intrinsic human value (and the lack of it) to specific political parties, to specific sexual orientations, and even to geographically placed subsets of people within our own nation and culture. And ALL basing their self-worth as human beings on their identities as members of these ever-increasing in number, and ever-diminishing-by-exclusion in size, subsets of special (privileged) humans. We're all allowing ourselves to be divided up into more and more and smaller and smaller "teams", to be pitted against each other for the prize of "superior citizen" within a society that is based on rewarding and enabling wealth and power with more wealth and power in every possible way and by every possible mechanism.

It's a sickness that is driving people crazy, quite literally.

sealchan said:

I counter with this article...

Gandhi and the burning of passes | South African History Online

Click to expand...

Well, I don't think the act of burning, in and of itself, is necessarily a bad thing. It's symbolic speech which can contain any underlying message, both good and bad.

There are, of course, differences between burning an identification card which is seen as a form of government oppression, and an actual book written to convey ideas and thoughts.

Stevicus said:

Well, I don't think the act of burning, in and of itself, is necessarily a bad thing. It's symbolic speech which can contain any underlying message, both good and bad.

Click to expand...

Back in the day book burning was a very nasty and very effective form of censorship. Take the books from the school, the library, the bookstore and burn them, no one can read them.

In the age of amazon it is perhaps more of a symbolic act and may even have the effect of promoting a book or author. Still I find the symbolism quite nasty.

Psychology...we all have one but we may not have an adequate working understanding of what our psyche is and does and how it gives us a rich conscious experience. For the most part we take our minds for granted and whatever comes out of our mouths our own personal gospel whose divine right is guaranteed by a simplistic reading of the Constitution.

Of course we should all rightly fear legislation entering the realm of the psyche but once that individual psyche extends into the sphere of the social, all claims to privacy are lost.

I think the crucial difference to consider in such an expression of "free speech" as burning books is in why it's being done. Is it to express an objection to the material in the books? Or is to to deny anyone else access to the material? If one is objecting to the material, then it would seem that there would need to be a shared understanding of what the material is that one is objecting to, or the objection is pointless. Whereas if one is simply seeking to deny everyone else access to the material because one disagrees with it, that is censorship, and an attempt to take unjustified control over other people's access to information.

PureX said:

Ultimately, all socioeconomic and political "privilege" boils down to who has the wealth and power, and what they're doing to make sure they keep it for themselves. In many cultures this animus tends to run along racial and ethnic lines, but not always. Sometimes it runs along religious, historical, and even geographical lines, too.

But here in the U.S. it tends to run along a complicated combination of these, which is why various groups have become so fiercely protective (defensive) about their own claim to any position in the privileged classes. And with so much competition, it becomes about more than just wealth and power. It becomes about one's innate value as a human being. And this is such an important and powerful desire/drive in us that politicians, commercial interests, the media, religion, all are playing on and into it for their own advantage, and thus are stirring up the intensity levels of it significantly. How many country songs on the radio are now touting the glory of being "country"; meaning that the singer's value as a human being is intrinsically linked to their identification with this certain class/sub-culture of Americans? Or how many "Christians" are defining their value before God by their identification with this specific sub-category of a religious sect? And now we are even connoting intrinsic human value (and the lack of it) to specific political parties, to specific sexual orientations, and even to geographically placed subsets of people within our own nation and culture. And ALL basing their self-worth as human beings on their identities as members of these ever-increasing in number, and ever-diminishing-by-exclusion in size, subsets of special (privileged) humans. We're all allowing ourselves to be divided up into more and more and smaller and smaller "teams", to be pitted against each other for the prize of "superior citizen" within a society that is based on rewarding and enabling wealth and power with more wealth and power in every possible way and by every possible mechanism.

It's a sickness that is driving people crazy, quite literally.

Click to expand...

Thanks for this...to a deep, unrecognized level I see the Judeo- Christian tradition as the cultural force that has driven individual identity as such in our psychological development as a species. The soul, or I, that we take for granted is not a given but a hard one battle against nature, against fate and against each other. Identity politics is but a natural out-growth of a democracy of individuals grouping up in fluid ways in order to promote personal interest in a world much bigger than the merely personal.

sealchan said:

This article got me to thinking about the all important discourse this country is going through in its efforts to address what might be the last round of racial dominance of white males:

Georgia college students burned the books of a Latina author - CNN

Clearly the classroom was "triggered" as the discussion centered on the very meaning of identity and freedom to act without undue restraint.

In my opinion, the discussion of race has become one which requires people to understand themselves more as a part of a greater, sometimes unaware and unconscious group, in ways that threaten their sense of fairness and equality. We haven't yet found the right language to communicate across this divide for many people although I am sure there is Star Trek episode or animated motion picture or two that addresses this.

Click to expand...

I’ll admit that I reacted quite harshly against Identity Politics in the past. But I think I didn’t really understand it’s nuance. Plus it was more American centric, so I didn’t quite understand the political agendas at play very well.
When people start questioning the institutions that are present in society, there will always be backlash. Even from former rebels. The anxiety and fear and even resentment that can crop up when told that you may be part of the problem, tends to put peoples backs against the wall. So they lash out. After some introspection, I have learned to “check my privilege.” Though in Australia I can’t say that I’ve run into that much identity politics in our culture or indeed academia. Not like America anyway. Not that we aren’t politically active about things, of course. (legend has it that the climate change protestors are still blocking bridges to this day.)

fantome profane said:

Back in the day book burning was a very nasty and very effective form of censorship. Take the books from the school, the library, the bookstore and burn them, no one can read them.

In the age of amazon it is perhaps more of a symbolic act and may even have the effect of promoting a book or author. Still I find the symbolism quite nasty.

Click to expand...

Another effective form of censorship was to simply prevent people from publishing or printing their works - or punishing them if they did. That's a quieter form of censorship which might actually be more effective.

In the Internet era, it's even easier to simply delete posts or accounts - or to ban people from the common platforms used to convey information. When Facebook or YouTube or some other platform decides to ban someone, are they doing the digital equivalent of "book burning"?

Stevicus said:

Another effective form of censorship was to simply prevent people from publishing or printing their works - or punishing them if they did. That's a quieter form of censorship which might actually be more effective.

In the Internet era, it's even easier to simply delete posts or accounts - or to ban people from the common platforms used to convey information. When Facebook or YouTube or some other platform decides to ban someone, are they doing the digital equivalent of "book burning"?

Click to expand...

Let me ask a hypothetical question.

Do you see a difference between someone choosing not to sell a particular book in their bookstore, and someone going to every other bookstore and ripping the book off the shelves and burning it?