Ontology talk:9k/RD/Q18,84

Main entry

1884. Q1884/Q18,84Adventures of Huckleberry Finn -> can you believe I added this entry specifically on the day when I was trying to find out when people do and don't avoid the word "nigger"? yeah. I did. but if you've read the book, I'd guess you probably can believe it. 219 occurrences??
      my conclusion was not to censor the word inside Ontology/prototype pages as long as the context is similar to this. personally, I practically never say it in daily life until something like this comes up. although my reasons aren't necessarily good reasons — I only talk about Black issues a limited amount, even though they're probably the number two thing I bring up after the history of the Soviet Union or China; LGBT+ issues are about number three. it wouldn't hurt me to look into these issues and events more carefully and in more depth instead of basically just saying "The Black Panthers" and then stopping.

Motifs in text

618. Q618/Q618Jim as stereotypical Black name -> I have no idea where exactly "Jim" came from. you have the Jim Crow laws, you have Disney animating "Jim Crow" and then you have "Nigger Jim" which may or may not be from the same origin. was it just the same linked group of racists copying each other?
618. Q618/Q618I says I'll never vote agin / When "a free nigger ... from Ohio; a mulatter, most as white as a white man ... a p'fessor in a college" is allowed to vote, he reports: "Well, that let me out ... I says I'll never vote agin ... and the country may rot for all me" [1] -> that line feels almost like a hyperbolic joke meant to be something nobody would say and yet I swear this also really is some people as late as 2012

Subjective themes

1884. Q1884/Q18,84Adventures of Huckleberry Finn -> this is a very interesting prototype page in that most of the "subjective themes" weren't found by me.
618. Q618/Q618the shame is ours / we have ground the manhood out of them (African Americans; Black people; the negro people), and the shame is ours, not theirs, and we should pay for it (Mark Twain, early 1900s) [2] -> if that isn't a summary of a lot of discourse going around today
618. Q618/Q618The use of racial slurs inside Mark Twain's work is part of illustrating the central thematic antagonisms of the narrative / "When Huck comes back to that raft, he says, 'They're after us.' He doesn't say, 'They're after you.' ... And that's the moment when it becomes about the American dilemma, it becomes about, 'Are we gonna get along?'" (David Bradley, University of Oregon) / It's not Huckleberry Finn anymore [when you remove the slurs] (Bradley) [3] [4] [5] / bowdlerization (arguments against; generic)
618. Q618/Q618Language made slavery possible / "Nigger" was what made slavery possible (David Bradley, University of Oregon) [6] -> I think I agree with him about the book because yeah, it looks like if you wanted to teach people specifically about the history of the word "nigger" this book would be a great choice, and so you are taking away from one thing it clearly illustrates by trying to censor the book. but... I don't know if I agree with him on this part, which implies that slavery itself was caused by racist behaviors (language) or prejudice. do you think the Romans actually hated people when they conquered other groups of people, or do you think they were merely obsessed with what they would be able to build in their own civilization, and made up rationalizations afterward once they had the slaves? from my limited knowledge I assume it's the latter. the Confederacy was definitely a hateful place but there was a material end that slaves were used for, which was slave plantations and exporting cotton. so even if the Confederates really did make use of slaves because they were hateful there's still the possibility they didn't understand the real reasons they were doing things. saying that an abstract hateful attitude caused slavery isn't a Materialist understanding.
618. Q618/Q618positive connotations of n-word / the good stuff that comes with "nigger" / Having an awareness that your people have overcome centuries of oppression. The pride of saying, 'Yeah, you can say anything you want and it won't slow me down one bit' (David Bradley, University of Oregon)
618. Q618/Q618Adversity yields to growth (arts) / Adversity is a time for growth (arts) / I do feel like any time you come up against something that creates tension or creates discomfort it is a point at which you could grow ... and I don't think that teaching kids to step away from that is healthy (Nora Wise) / Is the argument that these kids should be subjected to pain? (negative form of proposition; Randall Williams) [7] -> this is such a complex statement to make. it's true, but other people in the discussion clearly failed to understand the difference between emerging from pain safely and being destroyed by pain.
     a lot of literature deals with the difference between these two things. this is the point of concepts like "eucatastrophe" and the 'unwanted institution' of modernist art versus postmodernist art.
618. Q618/Q618Any fictional narrative (literature; art) that insists on a happy ending is partially didactic (meta-Marxist literary analysis) -> people draw the category of didactic fiction way too narrowly. I feel like only stuff that intends to be intensely biographical toward its characters and solely show the most likely and realistic outcomes of things, or which is despair for its own sake, is the stuff that isn't didactic.

Related

618. Q618/Q618anti-Obama backlash (2012-) -> this happened later on the timeline than the most likely dates for "I says I'll never vote agin". but all of the same themes come up. it's almost like at particular moments there's a particular "anti-race-mixing counterrevolution" that takes over, though to be honest I don't fully know what it "is". I throw around the word "Toryism" but that's an umbrella term for anti-parliament people that exist after parliaments were first created and feudal orders first started going away bit by bit; it's not a specific and precise type of tendency.

Ideologies, fields, or genres

618. Q618/Q618Fy (pronounced Fiction) / fiction about United States racism
618. Q618/Q618PT (pronounced racism) / prejudice against race mixing
618. Q618/Q618PT (pronounced racism) / prejudice against integration
618. Q618/Q618W (pronounced West) / hegemony politics