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Underground > Head Shop >

Wiggers: Socially acceptable racism? Identity rebellion? Sheer stupidity?

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13:41 / 06.03.02

Yeah, sorry Fly but I only half get what you're saying and could do with a clarification.

quote:Originally posted by Deva:
but are there other forms of identification/ racial styling that could work more progressively?

A white voodoo practitioner once said, "it's hard to be racist if your gods are black". I know quite few white pagans/magicky types who deal with black deities come to fink of it. Dunno how relevant that is, but it should certainly start a semi-analogous fight about the politics of invented traditions and magico-religious syncretism...

15:06 / 06.03.02

Ya, man. Social progress. Two races merging into one culture or somet shit.

I'd love to hear an intellectual argument from a "wigger" about the progressive social implications of this. Seriously.

Bop

16:33 / 06.03.02

wiggers are just more proof that whites are the inferior race, yes i am white.

white people are more like apes than black people, contrary to what is commonly thought.
black people have been stuck around white people and white media, music, movies ect for a long time and yet they keep comming out with original material and retain a sense of self, but put a white person in front of mtv for a week and it'll start thinking its black. so much that it will change its clothing, language, posture, attitudes and opinions, goals and alliances.
im not saying blacks are brilliant, most feed into the idea that they are suppressed and want nothing more than to be accepted by whites. but how many black kids do you see riding skateboards in jncos with chains on their wallets, goatees and korn shirts because they want to fit in?

"we sing the death song, kids, cuz we got no future, and we wanna be just like you..."

17:08 / 06.03.02

Illfigure -

You're making some interesting leaps about inferior/superior and relative primateness.

Said the man who named himself monkey.

06:32 / 07.03.02

quote:Originally posted by Illfigure:
put a white person in front of mtv for a week and it'll start thinking its black. so much that it will change its clothing, language, posture, attitudes and opinions, goals and alliances.

... but not stop being racist, apparently, otherwise MTV would have ushered in a perfect world already.

11:07 / 08.03.02

quote:Originally posted by Flyboy:
Agree about the nasty taste - regardless of whether the original site is a pisstake or not, some of the comments in this thread have left me uncomfortable, without exactly being able to express why.

You may have a point about the specifically racial elements of the mockery, Flyboy, but my own feeling is that this is a place where class, race and gender are inflecting each other in quite unpredictable and chaotic ways... but one of the less complex things that does seem to be going on, is this idea that 'wiggers' understanding of racial politics is cruder than 'ours'. It just reminds me of nice white middle-class liberals getting all upset about working-class people saying "Paki" [and I am as guilty of this as anyone if not more so], whilst not addressing the ways in which their own racism is perhaps all the more insidious for depending on a certain set of classed assumptions that 'it's not nice to mention race', for example. So here, it feels like all us nice, liberal, well-educated people are scapegoating working-class practices of racial appropriation in a way which actually says more about our class prejudices than about our superior apprehension of 'race'.

Haus about we all give each other a big lovely huggle?

11:20 / 08.03.02

This is a very good and worthwhile point, and probably worthy of its own thread. In a sense, the prejudices of the elites (yes, I know) are pretty much invisible.

This is why Blake seems to be a terrorist (I suspect) to many of the more comfortable members of the Federation - he wants to blow up this glorious interstellar alliance they have worked so hard to create and stabilise, and they cannot for the life of them understand *why* - it's not like it's a bad thing (which leads on to my theory of why Pylene-50 is a metaphor for Star Wars, but never mind that now).

In fact, I feel a new thread coming on, entitled "but we're on your side...."

11:34 / 08.03.02

One thing to keep in mind, the clothes and the cars that comprise this "style" don't come cheap. To call wiggers a working class phenomenon is a bit misleading.

The fact that these kids are far above working class is sort of built into the definition (at least were I'm from). The economic differential is another part of the problem. I'd like to think that we can all accept the premise that so called urban culture's fascination with expensive and flashy clothes, car, and style is escapist. Less to do with having the money, but wanting so desperately to pretend to have it. Which makes it rather galling to have people who do have the money rub that in your face by co-opting your style.

11:52 / 08.03.02

quote:Originally posted by passer:
To call wiggers a working class phenomenon is a bit misleading.

The fact that these kids are far above working class is sort of built into the definition (at least were I'm from).

Okay, that's interesting. We don't seem to have the same phenomenon, or at least not in the same way, on Gauda Prime*, so I may be getting the wrong end of the stick in terms of its class positioning.

*or this may be because I hang almost exclusively with middle-class degree-level-educated people so I have no idea what goes on...

(Haus, have you started a new thread? Go do so. And remember that Blake has been mindwiped. That has fucked with his psyche to the extent that the only thing that gives him any shred of consistent identity is the fight against the Federation [See my forthcoming story, 'Charmed']. Which makes him perhaps a good analogy for the 'wigger' phenomenon in more ways than one, since he too lives out, often painfully and controversially, a complex intersection between identity, politics, and large-scale social discourses. Oh, and on Pylene-50 - you have read the novella-length B7/Sandman crossover in which Morpheus gets pissed because Pylene-50 is stopping people from dreaming, haven't you? It's actually quite good, alarmingly)

Can you tell I'm meant to be transcribing a seminar on 'translating class'? Oh well. Back to the grind. And sorry that I keep rotting this thread. But I said some intellectual stuff this time as well.

[ 08-03-2002: Message edited by: Deva ]

14:21 / 08.03.02

Got to say that, in my experience, this seems to be more a middle class phenomenon than working class. Why do you consider it to be a working class thing, Deva?

Regrettable Juvenilia

14:28 / 08.03.02

Personal experience? Mine would suggest that it can be both, although in different ways. However I think it's a mistake to think that there is a simple and definable "it" here - more on which to come, I promise.

Haus about we all give each other a big lovely huggle?

14:43 / 08.03.02

quote:Originally posted by Deva:

(Haus, have you started a new thread? Go do so.)

Confirmed

Sorry, stopped now.

17:57 / 08.03.02

quote:Originally posted by E. Randy Dupre:
Why do you consider it to be a working class thing, Deva?

1. Because actually I just wanted to spin off into my own worries about the classed elements of racism.

2. Because there were some early posts about 'white trash' which I probably didn't read closely enough.

3. Because I don't know what I'm talking about. Thanks for calling me on it.

No star here laces

09:33 / 09.03.02

Whether it is or isn't a working class thing is not something anyone is going to be able to demonstrate - 's purely opinion.

I would say that to most peeps here a middle class kid who acted black would be a 'wigger' but a working class one would just be 'scary' which probably skews the perceptions.

To me the interesting point about all this is that there is some kind of line that has to be crossed to earn the title 'wigger'. Liking black music doesn't cut it on its own. Neither would wearing baggy clothing or using slang. But put 'em all together and it does. Why?

I do think this has to do with racism.

There's a subtle difference between co-opting elements of black culture into a broadly white persona (e.g. listening to hip hop then talking about it intellectually) and mimicing a black persona (Tim Westwood).

The first is not threatening to white society as it reaffirms white power to do as it chooses with black culture. It says that elements of blackness are worthwhile, but not the whole package - "them niggers are stupid, but they sure can cut cane". Thus it does not need to be ridiculed.

On the other hand, the mimicing of blackness in its entirety is extremely threatening to white society. It undermines all the existing power structures and implies equality if not superiority by saying that not only are the things blacks produce worthwhile, but that they themselves are also worthwhile.

White society's response to this is ridicule and mockery - by making fun of the 'ridiculousness' of the behaviour they seek to remove its threat - Ali G = Blackface Minstrels = Amos 'n Andy. All behaviour is ridiculous on some level - why single this out?

And what is being mocked? There are only two possibilities - black behaviour is inherently stupid and therefore deserving of mockery; or that it is ridiculous for one race to attempt to behave like another.

The first is clearly racist. The second is an othering of different races and an exaggeration of their differences - if a white man cannot behave like a black, then a black can never be accepted by whites.

The whole business and the word itself stink.

14:51 / 09.03.02

There is a third possibility, Lyra, that what's being mocked is the appropriation of a lifestyle (or rather, an extremely cliched view of a lifestyle) purely in order to upset authority figures or as an attempt at individuality.

[ 09-03-2002: Message edited by: E. Randy Dupre ]

09:28 / 10.03.02

I hate it when black people try to act like white people...the nerve. They need a wake up call huh guys?

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