Ms. Gill, thank you for this article. Your message resonated with me, as the son of a Chinese mother and a Caucasian father; like you, I don't fit neatly into any, single racial or ethnic category. Also like you, I "personally identify far more with my sense of reason and my moral value system than with my racial makeup or my gender." The degree to which art reflects these qualities, and the caliber of the art, should guide our assessment. We should do our best to foster an open environment and ensure equal opportunity for artists from all backgrounds (an area needing improvement), but then, just like orchestras use blind auditions, judge the art solely on its quality.
I've been in the grant industry for a while... I think a lot of this identity politics is about a grab for resources because we all intuit increasing scarcity and dwindling opportunities. But instead of figuring out how to bake a larger pie, we are all fighting each other for crumbs.
Once you get past the silly "only people of color can assess the lives of other people of color" argument which has northern New Mexican Spanish (who descended from the people who enslaved the Natives) responsible for telling the story of the Pueblos you find a more difficult problem. Individuals who have an experience, have a particular experience. They cannot have a general one. This is inevitable a huge bias. A wealthy immigrant who flew to the US to join her family may actually have greater social barriers to overcome when reporting on poor refugees who came by boat via Greece. And I use the first example specifically because some very high quality work on Pueblo history was done by descendants of the Conquistadors.
It’s also unfortunate that when the black documentary filmmaker, Shelby Steele, made a film about his 50 years of experience with the black community in E. St. Louis and Ferguson, he was shunned by Amazon Prime because his story didn’t conform with the (blatantly false) BLM narrative. Public pressure, however, made Amazon reversed its position, and now you can watch “What killed Michael Brown” on Amazon, YouTube and other platforms.
To best fight this identity epistemology, we need responses and slogans that are more on the offensive, that point out THEIR weaknesses in a morally condemning way. The way it is now, with us always on the defensive, just means that it spreads more slowly, but spreads nonetheless. For example, if someone says, "Black Lives Matter" at work, I know say, sure, "All Black Lives Matter"...including the ones in high crime neighborhoods. This takes their argument and flips it and now THEY are on the defensive. We need more of this.
I'm missing something here: If I can't understand a Syrian refugee (because I'm not a Syrian refugee), how do I know that he cares whether I misrepresent him or not? I mean, he might say that he does, but how do I know I'm understanding him when he says that? Maybe to another Syrian refugee it would mean something completely different. And what, for that matter, could I hope to gain from watching such a documentary? If it was made by a Syrian refugee -- which it would have to be since it's about Syrian refugees -- why would I understand either what the subjects of the documentary are saying or what the documentarian is saying?
I agree with all those sentiments but you are preaching to the choir here. Bad publicity from Twitter is good advertising for the documentary, yes? As long as there is a market competing for good films, let the chips fall where they may. Stuff like this why I subscribe to Persuasion but ignore Twitter.
Spectacular piece! Those arguing that stories can be told accurately only by those with the same or similar "lived experiences" seem to subscribe to the possibility of a "private language"--a putative concept that was exposed as patent nonsense by Wittgenstein in his Philosophical Investigations.
Ms. Gill, thank you for this article. Your message resonated with me, as the son of a Chinese mother and a Caucasian father; like you, I don't fit neatly into any, single racial or ethnic category. Also like you, I "personally identify far more with my sense of reason and my moral value system than with my racial makeup or my gender." The degree to which art reflects these qualities, and the caliber of the art, should guide our assessment. We should do our best to foster an open environment and ensure equal opportunity for artists from all backgrounds (an area needing improvement), but then, just like orchestras use blind auditions, judge the art solely on its quality.
If they're going to practice what they preach, no one who's not Mexican-Egyptian has the right to disagree with Gill.
I've been in the grant industry for a while... I think a lot of this identity politics is about a grab for resources because we all intuit increasing scarcity and dwindling opportunities. But instead of figuring out how to bake a larger pie, we are all fighting each other for crumbs.
Once you get past the silly "only people of color can assess the lives of other people of color" argument which has northern New Mexican Spanish (who descended from the people who enslaved the Natives) responsible for telling the story of the Pueblos you find a more difficult problem. Individuals who have an experience, have a particular experience. They cannot have a general one. This is inevitable a huge bias. A wealthy immigrant who flew to the US to join her family may actually have greater social barriers to overcome when reporting on poor refugees who came by boat via Greece. And I use the first example specifically because some very high quality work on Pueblo history was done by descendants of the Conquistadors.
It’s also unfortunate that when the black documentary filmmaker, Shelby Steele, made a film about his 50 years of experience with the black community in E. St. Louis and Ferguson, he was shunned by Amazon Prime because his story didn’t conform with the (blatantly false) BLM narrative. Public pressure, however, made Amazon reversed its position, and now you can watch “What killed Michael Brown” on Amazon, YouTube and other platforms.
To best fight this identity epistemology, we need responses and slogans that are more on the offensive, that point out THEIR weaknesses in a morally condemning way. The way it is now, with us always on the defensive, just means that it spreads more slowly, but spreads nonetheless. For example, if someone says, "Black Lives Matter" at work, I know say, sure, "All Black Lives Matter"...including the ones in high crime neighborhoods. This takes their argument and flips it and now THEY are on the defensive. We need more of this.
Ms. Gill has identified a useful new phrase: "identity segregationists". Or should that be "cultural segregationists"?
I'm missing something here: If I can't understand a Syrian refugee (because I'm not a Syrian refugee), how do I know that he cares whether I misrepresent him or not? I mean, he might say that he does, but how do I know I'm understanding him when he says that? Maybe to another Syrian refugee it would mean something completely different. And what, for that matter, could I hope to gain from watching such a documentary? If it was made by a Syrian refugee -- which it would have to be since it's about Syrian refugees -- why would I understand either what the subjects of the documentary are saying or what the documentarian is saying?
I agree with all those sentiments but you are preaching to the choir here. Bad publicity from Twitter is good advertising for the documentary, yes? As long as there is a market competing for good films, let the chips fall where they may. Stuff like this why I subscribe to Persuasion but ignore Twitter.
Spectacular piece! Those arguing that stories can be told accurately only by those with the same or similar "lived experiences" seem to subscribe to the possibility of a "private language"--a putative concept that was exposed as patent nonsense by Wittgenstein in his Philosophical Investigations.