thinking aloud 4: (AND I WANT THIS TO BECOME A PRODUCTIVE CONVERSATION ON TUMBLR, we can do that right?)

• @greydotmatters: *nods* everything is political. marginalisation, the domination and “power” to regulate a group/person postion [in] society/politically. i don’t see how “hurt feelings” alone can make one marginalised? can you give an example? weren’t the predatory home loans all about the marginalising the poor/working class/poc’s? could it be argued that individual violence is supported and a direct result of “state violence, state sanctioned violence, and paradigmatic violence”?
• …and isn’t that violence rooted in whiteness? maleness? which goes back to privilege and power and who has it?
• @negrosunshine: on the question of hurt feelings, i cant give an example. that was kind of the point. all this talk surrounding the "shit_____say to_____" videos, particularly the thread this evening on "shit straight girls say to gay men" is a lot of chatter about a lot of nothing, or hurt feelings. conversations of privilege usually don't point to concrete examples of how privilege works, outside of rhetorical gestures that acknowledge whatever identity is on the table at the time. in other words, people seem to find a pseudo liberation in saying "i exist!" and stopping there. im NOT disregarding the life affirming gestures in acknowledging our existence (its why i write), but too often we stop there. "im so and so, and im a -gay-cis-poor-blah-blah-blah-blah, check yo privilege!" 'okay, its checked, you called me out, what do we do now?' why is that an important question? because whether or not its checked, or whether or not offensive rhetoric or rhetoric that erases existence is used or not by the individual people we check, IT DOES NOT CHANGE THE systemic violence, structural position, life chances of anyone involved. that is going to need to be done with the same if not higher amount of violence the state or perhaps civil society has at its disposal to maintain its order (and thats when shit gets scary/bleak). so what does regulation in society actually look like, who is regulating and who is being regulated? and the answer is not as easy as a question of privilege. it is a question of power. and power reveals itself in ways and it also conceals itself in other ways. which is why conversations like this are so important. figuring out what power is, where it is, how it operates.
• (breathes)
• @negrosunshine: on the question of predatory home loans, if we track the history, i think a good starting point would be around Emancipation and the promise of 40 acres and mule. (and its been awhile since ive discussed this, so perhaps someone could help me out *cough* @jeromeiznice @james-bliss or really ANYONE *cough*) and the Homestead Acts. The secret to American wealth is property ownership (duh, slavery), but post formal slavery, landownership (later transformed into homeownership), America, never making good on that initial promise, started giving land to Blacks under the Homestead Act, and disqualifying them because they couldnt maintain the land "properly." The land goes back to whites after the "fall of slavery" (which were the old slave masters) and then we get the birth of debt-peaonage, or sharecropping (Blacks still working land for whites). Fast forward a few years to the north, and you get the creation of the suburbs, and segregation laws that don't allow Black in certain neighborhoods, segregation goes away "technically," but you have all these weird rules and redlining that make it financially risky/irresponsible for whites to live near Blacks so the suburbs stay white, and inner-cities become overcrowded ghettoes. Plus after WWII, veterans come home and are promised homes! all these lovely homes for real cheap in the suburbs, but Black veterans are not afforded the same loans! true story.
• (breathes)
• @negrosunshine: so you have this whole history of Black people being excluded from land/home ownership, which is THE BEST way to ensure wealth gets passed down generation to generation. fast forward to just a few years ago and these predatory home loans you talk about, but noone puts them in context of the history they directly stem from. yes they were a way to marginalize poor/people of color, but few, very few attempt to get at the root of the problem, and reckon the fact that the institution is anti-Black, it was since its conception and it certainly is now. what could we do if we mobilized that way?
• (breathes)
• @negrosunshine: violence rooted in whiteness and maleness? sure and sure. individual violence supported by state violence? sure. its getting late and ive been reading all day, if someone is reading this join in this conversation! ill keep thinking on it, and come with a better answer than "sure and sure." or you, my friend @greydotmatters, can preempt my strike (in a george bush fashion) and drop some knowledge on me (in an un-george bush fashion) :)