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I suppose skin bleaching is kind of the most visible and irrefutable expression of internalised racism, one that even white people unaffected by racism and blinded by privilege kind of have to take note of and confront. It's just there and you need some incredibly perverse leaps of unlogic to not acknowledge it. I guess the worst part about it is that it's not some erroneous belief; lighter skin really does open doors, even in majority black cultures, and the same is true of other stereotypically caucasian features like straight hair, thinner lips, rounder eyes or narrow, aquiline noses which can lead to better off ethnic minorities seeking out even plastic surgery. Even though the root of the caucasoid prestige and privilege comes from colonialism and various systems of white supremacy, it's taken on such a life of its own in some cultures that even when most other systems of white hegemony are removed or replaced the phenomenon persists - though the proliferation of western white-dominated media and advertising no doubt still plays a role in propagating it. It's a feedback loop too. Because of this attitude those with whiter features get further and do better in the social sphere and become more visible as models of success. I don't even know where you'd begin with trying to unpick the whole thing, particularly as a white fella that's experiencing it from the outside. Disclaimer: I am also a white fella observing the phenomenon from the outside and some or all of the above could be a crock of poo poo and require correction by someone with a better understanding of the issue.
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Sep 25, 2016 22:49
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Crazy Joe Wilson posted:I was going to say, isn't lighter skin color something prized in societies like India or China, and was so prized even before European Imperialism? Yeah, I guess I forgot about that. I think it's something to do with agrarian societies and nobility. You work in the fields all day your skin is darker, whereas if you're sitting on your rear end in the shade all day like an aristocrat you're paler and thus more prestigious. Still, though, in a modern post-industrial society it should be the inverse: workers are inside now, the well-to-do can go on vacation or visit tanning salons. And it doesn't explain away the various other obsessions like facial characteristics, eye shape or hair texture.
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Sep 26, 2016 01:14
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Ew. Gross. Your opinions I mean.
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Sep 26, 2016 19:03
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Liberal_L33t posted:Yes. I realize that isn't a popular position to take. But I do in fact believe that the homogenizing power of western culture and media has been a profoundly positive influence. Western, Americanized consumer culture gets a lot of criticism for spreading all over the world, I think a little perspective and careful consideration of the alternatives put the lie to that. Here was me thinking the myth of the civilising mission was dead and buried. Some of us aren't hugely fond of capitalism and consider it to have exacerbated the pre-exisitng social problems you consider to be the worse alternatives in the first place. Liberal_L33t posted:Let's go back to the initial questions in this thread. There does seem to be widespread acceptance of the (admittedly lamentable) fact that having skin darker than a certain shade imposes opportunity costs. For the record, I think the OP was on the right track in saying "if it's because they believe they'll be more successful if they're pale, I can articulate other methods of achieving success or challenge them to better describe what that success is". Certainly, skin bleaching is a delicate issue and probably best avoided in this context if only because it can lead to frightening levels of backlash. All that being said, I think trying to instill in these children the exceptional, unique value of their own particular appearance or ethnic/cultural group is the wrong response and likely to result in brittle loops of circular reasoning and naturalistic fallacies ("You shouldn't want to change your appearance, black is beautiful!" Hypothetical child: "Why is black beautiful?" "Because it is how you naturally look!"). There's a big difference between the privileging of one race over others and the attempt in the African diaspora to rebuild and foster a sense of self-esteem in one's ethnic identity. "Black is beautiful" is like "Black lives matter"; it carries an implicit "too" with it. "Black is beautiful" is not the same ballpark as "white is right." Liberal_L33t posted:Instead the focus should be on sending the message that skin tone, like any other aspect of their appearance, does not define them or limit their options unless they choose to let it. Maybe that isn't always true but it's the most positive way to respond to the problem I can think of without falling into the trap of essentialism. Ah, yes, it all boils down to personal individual choice. Why examine systems of white supremacy or cultural hegemony at all. Just clap your hands and believe hard enough and you too can be a star. After all, women are not defined or limited by their gender in our society, just as gay men are not defined or limited by their sexuality and muslims are not defined or limited by their religion. We can all just delete prejudice from our experience by ignoring it and refusing to confront it, capitulating where possible so that everyone can just get along in perfect harmony. Or perhaps it would be better to actually acknowledge that those problems exist and that bleaching one's skin or straightening one's hair (or trying to otherwise "pass" for white and western to appease the prejudiced) is not a good solution. Liberal_L33t posted:I feel like it's worth mentioning that Ghana, the country that made headlines for ordering an outright ban of skin-lightening ointments, is also a country that as of a few years ago started calling upon the citizens to inform on any neighbors or tenants they suspected of being gay so that they could be rounded up and arrested. Ethnic nationalism, including non-white ethnic nationalism, has a strong tendency to be correlated with horribly regressive attitudes. So yes, I would say that we can acknowledge that the tendency for these young people to think they need skin lightening is unfortunate, but their fellow citizens that go berserk in response have some very ugly attitudes themselves. In the case of Ghana, as well as many other black majority developing nations, I tend to think religion, toxic masculinity and the risk of AIDS has a lot more to do with homophobic attitudes than banning skin bleaching does. TomViolence fucked around with this message at 08:03 on Sep 27, 2016 |
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Sep 27, 2016 07:54
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I think we should probably leave the discredited corpse of the unilinear model of cultural evolution undisturbed in its casket where it belongs. The idea that all progress takes place along a singular trajectory with western liberal society as its defined end-point is a spurious one and arbitrarily positioning prescriptive goalposts that favour such a view is not a good strategy. Also, using the ongoing struggle for LGBT rights and recognition, which is not yet won even in so-called "enlightened, western" societies as the go-to metric can only give us some very misleading ideas of what a developed, progressive society is. Just because a law is on the books does not mean that a society is welcoming or accepting to LGBT people. France decriminalised homosexuality as far back as the revolution, but it would be idiotic to pretend that widespread acceptance of LGBT lifestyles there was the norm for anything more than the last twenty years or so, if that. Western liberal society, for most of its lifespan, has actually been actively hostile to LGBT people and it has chiefly been through the efforts of actual LGBT people - rather than paternalistic, hegemonic western governments - that LGBT rights have attained the recognition they have done in recent years. LGBT people in developing, non-western nations are undertaking similar struggles and while we should all stand in solidarity with them, they have not expressed a need for a white saviour to swoop in and impose their own decontextualised one-size-fits-all values in a reiteration of empire's civilising mission.
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Oct 2, 2016 18:46
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shrike82 posted:As opposed to non-Western cultures which practice stuff like FGYM? Every society has its problems, but proposing a transplant of western cultural norms as a panacea is misguided at best. Underlying reasons for social ills like FGM and persecution of sexual minorities are best combated by a contextual approach adapted to the circumstances of the society where they're taking place and implemented by people directly invested in their outcomes. Imposing western values from above invites a culture-shocked backlash that would likely undo whatever meager good such initiatives could hope to deliver and give ammunition to a culture's homegrown reactionaries, as happened with the Taliban in Afghanistan or Boko Haram in Nigeria. If reform and modernisation is seen as the intrusive machinations of an imperial aggressor or coloniser it can't take hold and is doomed to failure.
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Oct 2, 2016 19:09
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Quite the deluge here, so forgive me for being somewhat brief and/or glib.Liberal_L33t posted:Well, I can't exactly argue against the potshots you're taking at western liberalism since they are technically true (though there are degrees of "hostility to LGBT people", and saying that it was 'chiefly through the efforts of actual LGBT people' that said rights were established isn't exactly wrong but misleading as all hell in the context you're using it - do you mean to imply that, say, everyone who voted for Harvey Milk was gay, or even a majority of said voters? Were all of the legislators who passed hate crime legislation either gay or solely motivated by direct pressure from gay constitutients?) No, I don't mean to imply that it's only gay voters that voted for Harvey Milk or that LGBT allies are motivated solely by pressure from gay constituents. I do however think that without the efforts of LGBT activists none of the rights now enjoyed by LGBT people would even be on the agenda, never mind enshrined in law and custom. quote:But I'm interested to hear what you think this beautiful, unique alternative to pernicious "paternalistic, hegemonic western governments" bringing down the gavel of law on homophobic institutions would look like. What examples can you give? Do you think that the hesitancy of LGBT persons in the developing world to advocate forthrightly for an individual-rights-based government might have something to do with tactical considerations and the necessity of survival when surrounded by millions of potentially murderous zealots without any strong legal protections to shield them? It's absolutely true that there are systems of repression and intimidation in play in developing nations that cause barriers to open advocacy of LGBT lifestyles, but I fail to see how this problem is best combated by western cultural hegemony, which can only breed further resentment. quote:When people in the 21st century talk about "western liberalism" and "westernization" as a model for governments, they basically mean a form of government where individual rights take precedence over community standards. If you're going to have a society and government where conservative religious views inform the laws that are made and the patriarchal family and village are legally enshrined as the ultimate good and a sacrosanct cultural unit, I feel that the onus is on you to explain to me how LGBT rights and acceptance comparable to those enjoyed in the west are going to be possible. I'm not entirely convinced that individual rights should take precedence over community standards. Rather I think that community standards should incorporate and respect individual differences. A small difference, perhaps, but an important one. quote:If we're to talk about extant societies instead of pie-in-the-sky theoretical utopianism - the nations that exist today, in 2016 - are there any nations aside from western liberal democracies that you would call a remotely acceptable "defined end-point", as you put it? Or do you mean to say you believe that the (admittedly unfortunate) injustices suffered by LGBT persons and other social minorities in western liberal democracies is equal and equivalent to the blatant oppression of them that exists everywhere that community standards are valued preferentially to individual rights? Because if that is the point you're getting at with all this talk of arbitrary goalposts, I don't really have anything to say in response except "gently caress YOU". In terms of extant societies as an acceptable defined end-point? There aren't any. But that doesn't excuse or dignify the idea that extant western liberal democracies are the desirable model. Liberal_L33t posted:"essentialism essentialism essentialism ESSEN-TIAL-ISM" The argument I was making there was not a moralistic one but a pragmatic one. Neglecting the context of an individual culture and trying to apply one singular model of development universally can seem on its face to be a good idea but the terrain is often more nuanced than that. If policy is not tailored to the circumstances you hit all kinds of hidden pitfalls, as happened in the ill-fated attempts by the Bush and Obama administrations in their attempts to modernise and democratise Iraq and Afghanistan. Local ethnic or religious divides or cultural practices or the like can scupper reform and modernisation before they even begin or set the stage for failure down the line. People don't just join ISIS or the taliban or boko haram because they're irredeemable reactionaries, they see westernisation as an intrusive, colonising force threatening their culture and way of life. A more contextualised and homebrewed strategy for modernisation nullifies at least some of this perception. Even the US and coalition forces in Afghanistan recognised this to a degree aand as a result employed cultural anthropologists and other social scientists to formulate a better strategy, which sadly was underutilised or went half-implemented at best. Liberal_L33t posted:oh, and - A Buttery Pastry posted:What does the mean for the imposition of "western cultural norms" on western populations? We have our own reactionaries reacting to those too, in similar ways. This is why I emphasize the desirability of a contextual strategy. In a western context, the imposition and reinforcement of western values makes sense. Where it does not make sense is in situations where the backdrop of western thought and western values is not already part of the social fabric.
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Oct 2, 2016 19:45
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Rush Limbo posted:The irony of citing the Taliban as being the prime targets of Western cultural imperialism is that were it not for the west arming them when they were still the mujahedeen they would have been a small insurgent force crushed by the Soviets. It depends on whether you think the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan was another form of cultural imperialism or not. It shouldn't be forgotten that they were also trying to impose their vision of progress and civilisation on Afghanistan, neglecting the human terrain in the process.
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Oct 2, 2016 19:57
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A Buttery Pastry posted:That western thought and values exist as part of the social fabric does not change the fact that we're seeing a reactionary movement against western values though? Is your point that western values are so strongly a part of the social fabric (in the West) that their imposition on reactionaries is not going to create a cultural backlash big enough for us to consider not imposing them, whereas the reaction in Afghanistan is going to be of a scale that makes any attempt at imposition doomed to fail? Because otherwise the distinction is basically down to where you draw your borders. Western society has a pre-existing canon of literature, art, philosophy, poetry, music and political thought that contextualises liberal reform and allows it to take place without too much inhibition. However, somewhere like Afghanistan has an entirely different canon, with entirely different traditions of thought and art and culture that a disembodied and transplanted system of western values will not gel with nearly as readily. For instance, in our efforts at westernising Afghanistan we showed people western art like Duchamps' Fountain, utterly bereft of context, and expected them to understand it outside of the western canon that the work itself was critiquing. This nonsensical and absurd, if well-meaning, effort is but a small example of the overall approach we adopted and exemplifies how and why it failed.
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Oct 2, 2016 20:20
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Hambilderberglar posted:I'm sorry to pick this out when it's not the focus of the thread, but do you have a link or something about this? It sounds so incredibly stupid I'm having a hard time believing that someone, somewhere, thought the path to democracy in Afghanistan started with loving Dada. I don't know if there's anything more in-depth kicking about, but I remember there was footage of the lecture where they were showing Fountain in Adam Curtis's documentary Bitter Lake. This article touches on it briefly as a sort of defining moment of the documentary and how it expresses perfectly the confused, patronising and simplistic mindset Curtis suggests we went into Afghanistan with.
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Oct 5, 2016 15:26
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