Yeah, I caught that. But the real problem is that blacks are racists. And actually, the thing is....=|= not sure if this approach doesn't actually make me less racist in the end, even than studiously non-racist people. Note, however, that the core of the approach is not just "admitting racism", which I actually don't admit to in the main, but rather in identifying the inherent, (hopelessly) complex racism inherent in positive black culture. The "trick" or twist to my view lies in the identification of positive black culture. Not that it isn't done or understood in many areas. It is not, however and in the main, introduced substantially in specifically generalized discourse concerning racism as such or in sites in which racism is an issue.

Now, to me that's interesting. I don't know if you find it so. The question is, if you're grasping it: does making positive black culture a theme and issue, in conjunction with the question of critique, make one less racist in a substantial way? It's not even quite clear what it means to do so. Note that in some worlds it's not uncommon at all: the idea of the "wannabe" white person, some will say "whigger", etc., and some authentically cross-cultural people who just live in a cultural mix, that's all there in some areas.

The issue and problem lies in when it is viewed as precisely "cross-cultural": as a matter of cultures as such. Black culture as such has an irreducible racist (as in black color) dimension. The "radical" move lies in shifting over to more and more of a language of "culture" as such, and lifting this out of its racial overtones and origins. What does it mean to do this? And then to link it with free critique?

I know I'm "thinking too much" for this fucking silly and partially racist original post, which is indeed hard not to laugh at. Even the baby's doing the horizontal head move, which is funny itself. And you know what? That's actually true! Babies and toddlers do indeed start mimicking gestures they see, they start puttin' on the bi'nis and it's really funny and cute when they do. I had a Haitian friend and when his little boy started busting these Haitian dance moves, it was funny and cute. So the question in this really tricky pic is: just what is happening in it? Just what is racist about it? Just why does it make sense? Just how is it wrong? Right?

But I like thinking so I do it wherever, which is part of my point, in the end, and the beginning. Because I think that thinking is needful (as my longer response took pains to specify), and I'm interested in interjecting it precisely where it doesn't take place.

The truth is that I like occupying this odd space that is both within and without a complex social concatenation and condition, the better to unravel, somewhat, its congealed and interlocking -- and oftentimes strangling -- fibers, admixture of intentions and forces, moralisms, assumptions, etc., because, I believe, the truth is that that is the condition we are in most of the time anyhow. It leads to some difficult language, strange plays of layers, setting of reactions. I remember one time I got myself in ""trouble"" (my quotation marks are very deliberate here) in such a strange use and snarl of associations and mixture of working within a given bigotry issue and also outside of it, in the strange operation that does this.

But here's the thing that gets me more than anything else: many of the supposedly "right" people, many of whom are merely followers, really, people who never say anything wrong, never do anything wrong, etc. -- many of these people strike me as being so fucking fake, so much more concerned with the avoidance of there being anything "wrong", and they are all too ready to pounce, in the most blandly stupid ferocity and morally capitalizing gesture, on any misstep, any perceived line-crossing. But it goes deeper than that, since that, in turn, shows itself to be yet another bigotry, perhaps the biggest bigotry of all. Your admission of a bit of racism speaks to that and has a certain humanity in it. Yet, you will note that I'm not quite admitting to much racism in my play on/in the OP. Why? Because racisms is totally fucked, that's why. And I think that's what you really mean. It's just that getting there takes a different kind of work, thinking and engagement altogether.

And this other bigotry ultimately may be serving to keep racism in place, really. Along with homophobia and a whole host of other ills that reach strangely intractable states. So intractable, indeed, that I believe they constitute positively emergent conditions that have to be understood and addressed as such, and that these emergent conditions are, in fact, the primary causes of our times.

But wait a minute. What does that mean, if virtually all of people's energies of change are devoted to the usual anti-oppression operations and attitudes -- not to mention the other bigotries they make possible (but then, I did mention these, didn't I?) --; what does it mean that one is identifying problems that the major operations of anti-oppression are actually contributing to in some basic ways, rendering them actually intractable, while playing a crucial role in the formation of these other, unrecognized emergent primacies?

PEACE (in a heavy black sounding voice)