Annie D

peeked at twitter and m'fers signing up for substack notes like it's gonna be any better

this is all i got to say to that

now hold on. let's hear him out

good time to remind people that i am still looking for work

functional programming, web dev, writing, voice work

whatever's stable enough to buy me a lease somewhere that's not trying to kill me

plzthx

This is a really important article. As social media has empowered marginalised groups in the imperial core to speak up about our conditions over the last decade or so, the institutions of ideological control - academia, professional national journalism and punditry, and political parties - have wrung their hands with greater and greater theatricality about 'polarisation', i.e. the idea that 'our' ability to be nice to one another and not make one another feel bad has been diminished by changing norms of social discourse as a result of technological shifts (social media is the usual, but not the only, scapegoat). 'Our' in this case indexes the participants in public discourse, I think.

This paper eviscerates that argument, showing that, to put in bluntly, the problem is not polarisation but injustice, and what the 'polarisation' hand-wringers are responding to is in fact having to think more often about the material circumstances of the oppressed groups on whose exploitation their comfort depends. In a sense, this is the argument of King's Letter From A Birmingham Jail, presented in a 21st-century academic mode and with a citational apparatus tuned for that context: that the white establishment values 'order' over justice, and would rather rest in the absence of conflict than accept the disruption to their status quo required for the presence of justice.

I could pick nits with the paper here and there (it's a little soft, I think, on anti-black backlash within the Democratic Party in America), but I strongly recommend reading it and keeping it somewhere handy to trot out next time someone you know complains about how 'mean' or 'intolerant' left-wing activists have 'become'.