Posts like this one are why I love Jeff Goldstein -- not just extremely funny, he's also academically brilliant:
That this argument precisely makes my point about the dangers of identity politics—“racism” is no longer something that can be decided upon globally, but is rather something whose conditions are determined by warring factions within a particular identity group—is lost on Roy, who seems to follow Said, implicitly if not explicitly, by championing a form of identity politics that allows each identity group to make its own rules.
While I can appreciate the point being made by Goldstein, I can also appreciate that whites telling blacks what the problems with blacks are is not generally going to be well-recieved and that there may be valid reasons for this...
Posted by: R. Alex | November 03, 2005 at 11:01 PM
True. I was responding more to his familiarity with Edward Said's arguments that often add up to saying that anything that goes on within a community is fine, and any external criticism -- or even curiosity or academic study, for that matter -- is racist.
Posted by: Adrianne Truett | November 04, 2005 at 06:53 AM