You're leaving out the worst part: the year she wrote this, she was named a FINALIST for the Pulitzer in commentary. And this was her biggest piece that year. It shouldn't surprise me but it still disappoints me how much this racially-essentialist garbage has captured elite institutions.
If I understand correctly the author was suggesting that people who were raised in noisy spaces grow accustom to noise. And people who are more familiar with quiet spaces tend to find quiet spaces more comfortable. Yep. That tracks. I wouldn’t have thought a person could find 2,000 words to say on the subject. But running the idea through the white supremacy discourse machine easily got her the word count she needed. Identity based analysis is an endless fountain of words, but the story always has the same ending.
Yeah, she really could have helped herself by focusing on culture and ditching the race-essentialism. There's an interesting discussion to be had about how to negotiate the fact that different people are accustomed to different levels of noise, but she didn't get near that discussion because she was only interested in tired race-based narratives.
I'd be curious to know how Native Americans fit into her analysis. They tend to live in rural areas. I suspect many, not all, would find the sounds of Manhattan to be disturbing. In general they aren't a wealthy group. And they aren't regarded as white. So where do they fit in?
This is why the DEI left will never win the culture war. They can’t. They’re not big enough and their argumentation leaves so many holes. They say “cultures are immutable and we should respect them”. They do this with minorities, or lgbt or whoever they like. But what they don’t realize, and most people don’t realize, is that that exact argument, as Jeff pointed out, is a two way street. It’s also the argument of every fundamentalist religious nutjob. “It’s my culture to brainwash my kids and teach them to hate and you can’t tell me otherwise because ….culture”. You don’t drop the ball with this argument. You literally hand it to the other side.
Circumcising woman? How else do we make sex not fun for them!?! It’s their culture! Isn’t it great!?
And religious people even have all the trauma and oppression in their past. Christians were historically oppressed. They have that in their back pocket. And we finally got them to put it away in the 20th century. But then this whole culture of essentialism comes along in the 21st century and teaches religious people that “yeah, no one can tell you your religion is wrong or backwards. Because no one is allowed to tell young black and Hispanic men that drag racing at 3 in the morning down a city street is bad and stupid. It’s just both of your cultures.” And as we know since no one can change or control their culture we just have to sit and take it.
Truth is some cultures are really stupid and we should actively try and sand off the rough edges if not get rid of them entirely. Female (and male) circumcision, misogyny, dress, racism, toxic honor culture, blood and soil, hitting your wife, drag racing etc etc. all culture related. All pretty darned stupid.
Anyone remember the dei training for a few years ago where the trainer went around telling white people that not only did “colored people time” (CPT) exist but that you had to allow for and honor it as a tradition amongst certain minorities. No matter you that the CEO of the company you’re merging with will only be in town for two hours and your pitch has to be perfect. Jose can’t be bothered to show up any earlier than 12:15. It’s his culture. What about teenage culture? I was always late for things as a teenager. Shouldn’t I just be able to be late for things forever?
Or, sometimes being loud af all the time, playing your sh*tty music at ear-splitting volume all the time, means you’re a piece of sh*t who doesn’t care about your neighbors. Regardless of “your culture.” I wonder if this author polled everyone in whatever ethnic paradise she is basing her observations on?
There really is a popular form of non-physical aggression which is "You have to put up with my chosen behavior." So you have to put up with my music at top volume, but I don't have to listen to yours.
Actually, it's very, very close to physical aggression: You are moving sound waves which are assaulting my ears. And my concentration, And sleep. And peace.
i think that was the article that got me to finally stop following the atlantic. can’t believe they not only didn’t disavow it but actually re-upped it. Love the post-script.
I actually respect The Atlantic's willingness to publish all sorts of stuff -- I think that causes them to have fewer ideological blind spots than most publications -- but they do publish a column or two a month that makes me think "what is this crap?"
It easily has the broadest spectrum of opinion. I’m sure there will be even more intense scrutiny on Jeffery Goldberg nowadays due to Israel/Gaza (and to be fair, his confessions of what he did while serving in the IDF are harrowing, but they are confessions, not whitewashings), but he and the Atlantic really have been broad minded in a way that, say, The Free Press only gestures at (Naill Ferguson? Seriously?!?)
yeah that sounds about right & to be clear I still read stuff that looks interesting and comes across my radar, I just stopped proactively paying attention to them as source curating good content.
The Atlantic social media team has this thing where they keep re-linking to their most controversial articles to get page-views. I used to follow The Atlantic on Facebook, and they linked to "The Whitest Music Ever" (about prog rock) over and over and over. And that's why I no longer follow The Atlantic on Facebook.
That-whitest band ever/ provides some old school Celebrity Death Match potential-my Final 4 would be Yes, Rush, George Jones ( he and Charlie Pride were drinking one night and after Charlie passed out, George spray painted KKK on his car as a joke), and Celine Dion
I don't think it's that unreasonable to start with a premise that for many reasons, some of them racist, some of them incidental, and some of them desirable, there are enclaves of different ethnic groups in cities. You can say the mission in sf or Chinatown are not 'essentially' Mexican/Chinese, but surely denying that their character is formed by immigrant backgrounds at all is worse?
I think then looking at how those neighborhoods change as they become more assimilated isn't a preposterous lens, and norms around police calling / loud music playing is certainly one of those changes.
Is there denying? Character isn’t an immutable thing.
Like. For instance I don’t think many people lament the death of orthodoxy among for instance Catholics. It’s probably good. Meat on Fridays. Beer on Sundays. Women wearing pants. No fault divorce. This country gentrified the shit out of Catholicism over the last 60 years. And good! The culture was toxic, sexist, cloistered and stifling. The country was run by a majority religious decree. But no one is like “aww. Wasn’t it great when the culture mandated fasting from Saturday sunset until Sunday sunset? No. Sanding off those rough edges is a good thing. The bad parts of cultures aren’t worth missing. Same with any culture. Polish it like a stone. Keep the fun stuff jettison the backwards superstition.
Another example is right now there is a lot of friction between (parts of) black and Jewish cultures. (And my god. The history there is legion and outside the scope of this comment lol). And that IS cultural. But it’s not a proud part of the culture. Sand it down.
Being annoying isn’t a culture it’s an excuse. Multiculturalism is awesome. I’m in a “multicultural” relationship (whatever that means) and I will tell you within that culture there are a lot of people who wish the really loud people would just knock it off and get on with life.
Are you aware that toxic, sexist, anti-birth control Catholicism is coming back hard and fast? Rosaries are big in the alt-right. (To a lesser extent, ditto chasidic Judaism.)
Yeah. And I’m no fan of it since we roundly defeated them in the 90s with no holds barred free speech. Now progressive want to draw lines around acceptable speech. Well. Catholics invented lines around speech. They’ll win that war every time. In fact I wrote about it. If you put censorship on the table as an option you wake a sleeping dragon.
About 10 years ago W Kamau Bell had a riff where he said “A little bit of gentrification is good. Like having a good supermarket nearby, that’s pretty good!”
That’s the playful version, and then there’s the pissed off version where Spike Lee is asking why Fort Greene only gets better policing after gentrification: “We been here”
This piece is closer to Spike, but with a little more wistfulness and rallying around finding your people.
Neighborhoods do change (my Jewish Grandmother was born in Harlem in 1908), but it would be nice if basic amenities didn’t require Money (and it’s cultural preferences) to come in beforehand.
As alluded to above, a well stocked supermarket and a functioning police force that treats the people living in the neighborhood as people to help instead of a problem to manage would be a start.
I don’t disagree. But that’s a complicated hornets nest. There’s a fine line between culture and policing. I think the intention is usually there. I think there are some major third rails that we need to deal with to help with those inner city issues. Both of them related to the apparently “untouchable” unions of both teachers and police.
If the local community are the customers for those programs then those two organizations need to be much more responsive to the local community. When there are no repercussions for bad actors then bad actors flourish.
You can’t reform organizations that are absolutely built to resist reform.
Thank you Jeff, for illustrating the absurdity of anti-racism with laugh out loud grade seven boy humour. As someone constantly amazed by the foolishness of what DEI has become, or perhaps always was, I am mourning how this virus has taken over an organization I was proud to be a part of for the past quarter century. I'll just say I work in education, and you should all understand. Pieces like this not only keep my hope alive that we will return to sanity one day, but let me know, I'm not crazy to stay off the DEI train, even though it means distancing myself from once beloved work.
Flatulent-Americans have been oppressed by assonormativity for too long. Thanks for doing the emotional labor of writing this piece and forcing people to confront their inner fartphobia.
So, I can't read the full Atlantic article as I'm not a subscriber, but according to her Wikipedia information, Xochitl Gonzalez is of Puerto Rican & Mexican descent and grew up in Brooklyn, so I might expect her to know this particular set of cultural norms fairly well. (One might also note that blond hair and blue eyes are certainly not limited to Caucasian people, even if they are most common in Caucasians, and whatever her racial background, I daresay Xochitl Gonzalez is no Hispanic Rachel Dolezal.)
I am of WASP descent and grew up in the wealthy, white, quiet suburbs of Richmond, Virginia- only to go to a university in the city and spend 10+ years living and working in some much poorer, considerably less-white areas of Richmond, of which we have plenty. I concur that there are different cultural norms about what is acceptable, and that many people learn their norms as part of enculturation in their race & ethnicity. The white people I grew up with would find it as crass to play loud music in public or throw chicken bones on the ground as the Black folks I lived and worked with would generally find it unthinkable not to scrub everything in the shower & moisturise afterwards, or refuse to help a family member or friend in dire need. That doesn't make either right or wrong, although some cultures do have norms (such as child marriage or honour killing) that are wrong and need changing from within.
For me, I currently live in a louder area and I prefer that- not the sirens, but I live across from a park and a group home that frequently have events, there is a lot of foot traffic and no insulation to speak of, and I don't mind music or knowing I have neighbours going about their lives. It's reassuring to me now. Different strokes for different folks.
She is probably the descendent of rich Criollos. Believe it or not "white supremacy" was not restricted to the USA, and believe it or not was exercised by white in other cultures too who didn't even have the nerve to speak English!
I am well aware. I no longer live in the US and have been thankful to have had the education of seeing a fair chunk of the world, including areas where my race was far from favoured. (Han supremacy is real in in China.)
As I said, I couldn't read the original article, so I can't comment on that.
I come from a noisy culture, of men who smoked over dinner and butt out their fags on their dinner plate, of blowing snot out one nostril while pressing down on the other all while walking briskly into a shop, of people hacking up a lung in public, of men who bash their wives and their children, oh and they're all factory workers. But if you don't give me my peace and quiet now, I will gut you. Thank you and good night.
“I immediately cooked a gallon of chili and bought opera tickets.”
The first sentence of the Great American Novel has been written.
At least we now know the source of Mimi’s deathly illness.
You're leaving out the worst part: the year she wrote this, she was named a FINALIST for the Pulitzer in commentary. And this was her biggest piece that year. It shouldn't surprise me but it still disappoints me how much this racially-essentialist garbage has captured elite institutions.
God. This really was a terrible piece -- blatantly racist and poorly argued.
This is a level of juvenile asininity that I can only wholeheartedly support.
I usually don't like fart humor but obviously I have made 30 exceptions here.
Wasn’t it Schopenhauer who said “Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can smell?”
If I understand correctly the author was suggesting that people who were raised in noisy spaces grow accustom to noise. And people who are more familiar with quiet spaces tend to find quiet spaces more comfortable. Yep. That tracks. I wouldn’t have thought a person could find 2,000 words to say on the subject. But running the idea through the white supremacy discourse machine easily got her the word count she needed. Identity based analysis is an endless fountain of words, but the story always has the same ending.
Yeah, she really could have helped herself by focusing on culture and ditching the race-essentialism. There's an interesting discussion to be had about how to negotiate the fact that different people are accustomed to different levels of noise, but she didn't get near that discussion because she was only interested in tired race-based narratives.
I'd be curious to know how Native Americans fit into her analysis. They tend to live in rural areas. I suspect many, not all, would find the sounds of Manhattan to be disturbing. In general they aren't a wealthy group. And they aren't regarded as white. So where do they fit in?
We are only interested in facts which confirm our stories, nazi racist. Now shut up, you are probably a white too!
This is why the DEI left will never win the culture war. They can’t. They’re not big enough and their argumentation leaves so many holes. They say “cultures are immutable and we should respect them”. They do this with minorities, or lgbt or whoever they like. But what they don’t realize, and most people don’t realize, is that that exact argument, as Jeff pointed out, is a two way street. It’s also the argument of every fundamentalist religious nutjob. “It’s my culture to brainwash my kids and teach them to hate and you can’t tell me otherwise because ….culture”. You don’t drop the ball with this argument. You literally hand it to the other side.
Circumcising woman? How else do we make sex not fun for them!?! It’s their culture! Isn’t it great!?
And religious people even have all the trauma and oppression in their past. Christians were historically oppressed. They have that in their back pocket. And we finally got them to put it away in the 20th century. But then this whole culture of essentialism comes along in the 21st century and teaches religious people that “yeah, no one can tell you your religion is wrong or backwards. Because no one is allowed to tell young black and Hispanic men that drag racing at 3 in the morning down a city street is bad and stupid. It’s just both of your cultures.” And as we know since no one can change or control their culture we just have to sit and take it.
Truth is some cultures are really stupid and we should actively try and sand off the rough edges if not get rid of them entirely. Female (and male) circumcision, misogyny, dress, racism, toxic honor culture, blood and soil, hitting your wife, drag racing etc etc. all culture related. All pretty darned stupid.
Anyone remember the dei training for a few years ago where the trainer went around telling white people that not only did “colored people time” (CPT) exist but that you had to allow for and honor it as a tradition amongst certain minorities. No matter you that the CEO of the company you’re merging with will only be in town for two hours and your pitch has to be perfect. Jose can’t be bothered to show up any earlier than 12:15. It’s his culture. What about teenage culture? I was always late for things as a teenager. Shouldn’t I just be able to be late for things forever?
The whole thing is silly. Like literally silly.
Or, sometimes being loud af all the time, playing your sh*tty music at ear-splitting volume all the time, means you’re a piece of sh*t who doesn’t care about your neighbors. Regardless of “your culture.” I wonder if this author polled everyone in whatever ethnic paradise she is basing her observations on?
There really is a popular form of non-physical aggression which is "You have to put up with my chosen behavior." So you have to put up with my music at top volume, but I don't have to listen to yours.
Actually, it's very, very close to physical aggression: You are moving sound waves which are assaulting my ears. And my concentration, And sleep. And peace.
i think that was the article that got me to finally stop following the atlantic. can’t believe they not only didn’t disavow it but actually re-upped it. Love the post-script.
I actually respect The Atlantic's willingness to publish all sorts of stuff -- I think that causes them to have fewer ideological blind spots than most publications -- but they do publish a column or two a month that makes me think "what is this crap?"
It easily has the broadest spectrum of opinion. I’m sure there will be even more intense scrutiny on Jeffery Goldberg nowadays due to Israel/Gaza (and to be fair, his confessions of what he did while serving in the IDF are harrowing, but they are confessions, not whitewashings), but he and the Atlantic really have been broad minded in a way that, say, The Free Press only gestures at (Naill Ferguson? Seriously?!?)
yeah that sounds about right & to be clear I still read stuff that looks interesting and comes across my radar, I just stopped proactively paying attention to them as source curating good content.
I love the breadth, the depth, the genius, and the inanity of that publication. The Atlantic is an American treasure.
The Atlantic social media team has this thing where they keep re-linking to their most controversial articles to get page-views. I used to follow The Atlantic on Facebook, and they linked to "The Whitest Music Ever" (about prog rock) over and over and over. And that's why I no longer follow The Atlantic on Facebook.
That-whitest band ever/ provides some old school Celebrity Death Match potential-my Final 4 would be Yes, Rush, George Jones ( he and Charlie Pride were drinking one night and after Charlie passed out, George spray painted KKK on his car as a joke), and Celine Dion
I don't think it's that unreasonable to start with a premise that for many reasons, some of them racist, some of them incidental, and some of them desirable, there are enclaves of different ethnic groups in cities. You can say the mission in sf or Chinatown are not 'essentially' Mexican/Chinese, but surely denying that their character is formed by immigrant backgrounds at all is worse?
I think then looking at how those neighborhoods change as they become more assimilated isn't a preposterous lens, and norms around police calling / loud music playing is certainly one of those changes.
Farting in shared spaces could be too!
Is there denying? Character isn’t an immutable thing.
Like. For instance I don’t think many people lament the death of orthodoxy among for instance Catholics. It’s probably good. Meat on Fridays. Beer on Sundays. Women wearing pants. No fault divorce. This country gentrified the shit out of Catholicism over the last 60 years. And good! The culture was toxic, sexist, cloistered and stifling. The country was run by a majority religious decree. But no one is like “aww. Wasn’t it great when the culture mandated fasting from Saturday sunset until Sunday sunset? No. Sanding off those rough edges is a good thing. The bad parts of cultures aren’t worth missing. Same with any culture. Polish it like a stone. Keep the fun stuff jettison the backwards superstition.
Another example is right now there is a lot of friction between (parts of) black and Jewish cultures. (And my god. The history there is legion and outside the scope of this comment lol). And that IS cultural. But it’s not a proud part of the culture. Sand it down.
Being annoying isn’t a culture it’s an excuse. Multiculturalism is awesome. I’m in a “multicultural” relationship (whatever that means) and I will tell you within that culture there are a lot of people who wish the really loud people would just knock it off and get on with life.
Are you aware that toxic, sexist, anti-birth control Catholicism is coming back hard and fast? Rosaries are big in the alt-right. (To a lesser extent, ditto chasidic Judaism.)
Yeah. And I’m no fan of it since we roundly defeated them in the 90s with no holds barred free speech. Now progressive want to draw lines around acceptable speech. Well. Catholics invented lines around speech. They’ll win that war every time. In fact I wrote about it. If you put censorship on the table as an option you wake a sleeping dragon.
https://open.substack.com/pub/anatomyofajoke/p/book-banning-they-learned-it-from?r=fjnsf&utm_medium=ios
Okay, but I think some people do in fact lament the death of loud block parties, which is more or less what the article is about.
Is it? I read it as about really obnoxious neighbors and teenage level adults blaring music from their low orders at 2 am and the saying “culture?”
Was there a Sunday afternoonblock party reference I missed? I may have I tend to read quickly.
About 10 years ago W Kamau Bell had a riff where he said “A little bit of gentrification is good. Like having a good supermarket nearby, that’s pretty good!”
That’s the playful version, and then there’s the pissed off version where Spike Lee is asking why Fort Greene only gets better policing after gentrification: “We been here”
This piece is closer to Spike, but with a little more wistfulness and rallying around finding your people.
Neighborhoods do change (my Jewish Grandmother was born in Harlem in 1908), but it would be nice if basic amenities didn’t require Money (and it’s cultural preferences) to come in beforehand.
What should basic amenities require?
As alluded to above, a well stocked supermarket and a functioning police force that treats the people living in the neighborhood as people to help instead of a problem to manage would be a start.
I don’t disagree but a lot of supermarkets aren’t to keen to open in a neighborhood where they have to keep everything behind lock and key.
Well, with a functioning police force, perhaps such drastic measures wouldn’t be necessary.
(Then there’s the perishable part of supermarket goods; not the same as the pharmacies you hear about getting stolen from)
I don’t disagree. But that’s a complicated hornets nest. There’s a fine line between culture and policing. I think the intention is usually there. I think there are some major third rails that we need to deal with to help with those inner city issues. Both of them related to the apparently “untouchable” unions of both teachers and police.
If the local community are the customers for those programs then those two organizations need to be much more responsive to the local community. When there are no repercussions for bad actors then bad actors flourish.
You can’t reform organizations that are absolutely built to resist reform.
Thank you Jeff, for illustrating the absurdity of anti-racism with laugh out loud grade seven boy humour. As someone constantly amazed by the foolishness of what DEI has become, or perhaps always was, I am mourning how this virus has taken over an organization I was proud to be a part of for the past quarter century. I'll just say I work in education, and you should all understand. Pieces like this not only keep my hope alive that we will return to sanity one day, but let me know, I'm not crazy to stay off the DEI train, even though it means distancing myself from once beloved work.
Xochitl Gonzalez is the Atlantic's Chief Whiteness correspondent?
Her parents culturally appropriated the hell out of the Aztecs for her first name as a blue eyed blonde!
Flatulent-Americans have been oppressed by assonormativity for too long. Thanks for doing the emotional labor of writing this piece and forcing people to confront their inner fartphobia.
So, I can't read the full Atlantic article as I'm not a subscriber, but according to her Wikipedia information, Xochitl Gonzalez is of Puerto Rican & Mexican descent and grew up in Brooklyn, so I might expect her to know this particular set of cultural norms fairly well. (One might also note that blond hair and blue eyes are certainly not limited to Caucasian people, even if they are most common in Caucasians, and whatever her racial background, I daresay Xochitl Gonzalez is no Hispanic Rachel Dolezal.)
I am of WASP descent and grew up in the wealthy, white, quiet suburbs of Richmond, Virginia- only to go to a university in the city and spend 10+ years living and working in some much poorer, considerably less-white areas of Richmond, of which we have plenty. I concur that there are different cultural norms about what is acceptable, and that many people learn their norms as part of enculturation in their race & ethnicity. The white people I grew up with would find it as crass to play loud music in public or throw chicken bones on the ground as the Black folks I lived and worked with would generally find it unthinkable not to scrub everything in the shower & moisturise afterwards, or refuse to help a family member or friend in dire need. That doesn't make either right or wrong, although some cultures do have norms (such as child marriage or honour killing) that are wrong and need changing from within.
For me, I currently live in a louder area and I prefer that- not the sirens, but I live across from a park and a group home that frequently have events, there is a lot of foot traffic and no insulation to speak of, and I don't mind music or knowing I have neighbours going about their lives. It's reassuring to me now. Different strokes for different folks.
She is probably the descendent of rich Criollos. Believe it or not "white supremacy" was not restricted to the USA, and believe it or not was exercised by white in other cultures too who didn't even have the nerve to speak English!
I am well aware. I no longer live in the US and have been thankful to have had the education of seeing a fair chunk of the world, including areas where my race was far from favoured. (Han supremacy is real in in China.)
As I said, I couldn't read the original article, so I can't comment on that.
I come from a noisy culture, of men who smoked over dinner and butt out their fags on their dinner plate, of blowing snot out one nostril while pressing down on the other all while walking briskly into a shop, of people hacking up a lung in public, of men who bash their wives and their children, oh and they're all factory workers. But if you don't give me my peace and quiet now, I will gut you. Thank you and good night.
This reminds me of the comedy video “When Wokes and Racists Actually Agree on Everything” on YouTube
"Jurassic Fart...the Gilgamesh Of Farts..."
I have IBS-D—hold my rear.
https://copyranter.substack.com/p/names-i-give-my-ibs-bowel-movements