Paul Cantrell
I think us white folks have a hard time hearing and processing things like what @popcornreel is saying here about needing Black-owned media.
(Conditioned white supremacist reactions: “Isn’t •that• racist?” “People should just learn not to see color!” “Can’t we all just get along™?” etc etc)
If you see this and then your inner Reply Guy starts piping up with stuff like that, I encourage you to block him and take a step back. Think about the context and the big picture here.
Paul Cantrell
My attempt at a quick menu of food for thought:
- Racism isn’t just a bad attitude. It’s systemic. It’s baked into our institutions, baked into who •owns• what, who •controls• what.
- Specifically, ownership of MSM is overwhelmingly white. That’s both an effect •and• a cause of racism.
- In a situation like this, it is grossly insufficient to wish away systemic and structural forces; we have to actively •counter• them.
- One of the best ways to counter those forces is to put the people they’ve marginalized in positions of actual power, give them actual ownership. That’s both redress for past harm •and• an active solution for the future.
TL;DR: more Black-owned media? Yes please.
2/2
Paul Cantrell
@meltedcheese
It’s a good question, and I’m well out of my depth trying to answer it. The one thing I feel confident saying is that it needs to be an “all of the above” sort of approach: break down barriers to advancement within existing media orgs AND gather backing for new orgs AND start small AND start big AND start shareholder revolts AND start customer results AND fight monopolies AND fight oligarchies AND…. Relative merits of those? How to execute each one? What I’m missing? No idea.
David J. Atkinson
@inthehands I agree, it is a worthy vision. I am struggling to understand the method to “put the people they’ve marginalized in positions of actual power, give them actual ownership.” For a publicly owned company, does that mean something like a shareholder revolt? Or hostile takeover? For a privately owned company, the means are even more obscure to me. One thing I think we know for sure is that court ordered sales/breakups, anti monopoly legislation, or state seizures of #MSM property are not viable in the current political reality. Ideas? 🤷🏻
Old Prof
@inthehands The argument for black owned media includes the demonstrated cowardice of white-owned media in the face of white racism.
Paul Cantrell
@PaulDavisTheFirst
20 years ago, I was fairly sympathetic to that line of argument. I’ve since come to believe that arguments that arrive at “racism is just class war, so solve wealth disparity first” are an intellectual trap laid for us by white supremacy. You have to tackle •both• problems mindfully and head on, or you’ll solve •neither•.
I do agree that wealth disparity, wealth concentration, and oligarchy are deeply entangled with this problem, and deconsolidating media is a helpful and probably necessary condition for the original goal.
PaulDavisTheFirst
@inthehands i am sure you know that those of the class-first persuasion would argue that this is just ignoring the fundamental problem.
ownership of MSM is about wealth as much as race; unless the proposal is to have MSM under some new ownership model (that happens to be less white as well as less wealthy), focusing on the race of the wealthy people who own stuff might be missing the point.
so ... more non-rich-individually owned media? yes please. then we can look at who ends up in control.
Paul Cantrell
@burnoutqueen @oldprof
Agreed to some extent, but see here: https://hachyderm.io/@inthehands/114061602056822861
Jackie 🍉 :gay_communism: :trantifa:
In general, it's not just a problem of racism. It's a class issue as well.
Classism often compounds racism and fuels racism in practice.
Jackie 🍉 :gay_communism: :trantifa:
The general problem with the media is that it is owned by a non representative elite that has no understanding of the needs of average people. This distorts the coverage and framing that is used to describe the current events happening in our society.
Paul Cantrell
@oldprof @burnoutqueen
Strong agree. I’d go so far as to say that these various harms prop each other up. They’re a many-headed hydra: if you cut off just one head while the others live, it will grow right back.
Old Prof
@inthehands @burnoutqueen I would add misogyny to the list of problems that have to be solved simultaneously. It seems to me that misogyny and racism go hand-in-hand as corrupt fruits of unearned privilege and entitlement. This does not come from a place of minimizing racism.
Paul Cantrell
@PaulDavisTheFirst
I’ve •definitely• heard people say “racism is just class war” in as many words or close to it, so you can understand my caution! And regardless of what people say, I’m simply unwilling to leave anti-racism off to one side. Can we tackle all these things at once? I don’t think we have a choice.
Regardless, to your original point, ownership and oligarchy are indeed central to the problem.
PaulDavisTheFirst
@inthehands thankfully, I have not seen "racism is just class war" (which is demonstrably false).
i think the two questions are (1) which problem can you gain more leverage over more quickly (2) which problem impacts the most people, thus impacting the answer to (1).
i'm a little ambivalent; arguments that you can do both at the same time seem to be poorly supported by most real world history. still, to actually pick one of tf the two is all kinds of challenging and likely unwise.
Paul Cantrell
@burnoutqueen @oldprof
Indeed. It’s just a necessary caution: I’ve seen “it’s entangled with wealth concentration” turn into “solve classism first” or even “racism is just the class war” too many times to approach this without caution.
With that import caveat said, yes, I agree with you.
Jackie 🍉 :gay_communism: :trantifa:
I'm not saying "solve classism first". What I am saying is that racism is compounded by classism in many respects.
I would go as far to argue that racism is an integral part of the ideology of the ruling class, and is an implicit value of the capitalist system.
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