party shout

a really fascinating essay on some of the issues around the notion of culture, identity and multiculturalism:

The African American writer Richard Wright described one of his finest creations Bigger Thomas, the hero of Native Son, as a man ‘bereft of a culture’. The Negro, Wright suggested, ‘possessed a rich and complex culture when he was brought to these alien shores’. But that culture was ‘taken from him’. Bigger Thomas’ ancestors had been enslaved. In the process of enslavement they had been torn from their ancestral homes, and forcibly deprived of the practices and institutions that they understood as their culture. Hence Bigger Thomas, and every black American, behaved very differently from his ancestors. Slavery was an abomination and clearly had a catastrophic impact on black Americans. But however inhuman the treatment of slaves and however deep its impact on black American life, why should this amount to a descendant of slaves being ‘bereft of a culture’ or having a culture ‘taken from him’? This can only be if we believe that Bigger Thomas should be behaving in certain ways that he isn’t, the ways that his ancestors used to behave. In other words, if we believe that what defines what you should be doing is the fact that your ancestors were doing it. Culture here has become defined by biological descent. And biological descent is a polite way of saying ‘race’. As the cultural critic Walter Benn Michaels puts it, ‘In order for a culture to be lost… it must be separable from one’s actual behaviour, and in order for it to be separable from one’s actual behaviour it must be anchorable in race.’

eli, the open moko is shipping

what's changed in barack's plan for iraq: http://versionista.com/diff/fRT7DSg2rdYtwaXAk1ZNaQ/

not that i mind the change. shit, i'm voting for change.

Despite the edits to his website, I do not believe that his recent remarks actually represent a substantive change of position.

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