Posts by Isaac Freeman
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OnPoint: Dear Labour Caucus, in reply to Damian Christie,
Out of interest, does anyone here (including the obvious candidates) not consider themselves to be middle class?
I entirely reject the terminology as indicative of outdated imperialist dogma that...
...nah, I'm middle class.
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Hard News: Word of the Year 2011 -- The Vote!, in reply to Tamsin6,
For my part, I used munted as a teenager, until I heard someone say it had its origin as a term of racial abuse in South Africa. I now know that's somewhat doubtful, but perhaps that idea had a role in the history of its usage. That is, perhaps there are a bunch of people who wouldn't use it until it had attained such currency that it clearly couldn't be taken as racist.
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Hard News: Name That Food Blog, in reply to Richard Aston,
We could generate endless threads on just naming threads .
Or a whole blog.
It could be called Kicking Ass and Taking Names or Losing the Thread or Dubbed or ...
I really basically only have one schtick.
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OnPoint: Dear Labour Caucus, in reply to Damian Christie,
At the risk of venturing into shark-infested waters – what is ‘middle-class’ in New Zealand anyway?
Someone (I'm going to say George Bernard Shaw, because it doesn't sound like Dorothy Parker, Mark Twain or Oscar Wilde) once said that what most defines the classes is what each thinks defines the classes. Working class people believe it's all about money, middle class people believe it's education, and the gentry believe it's down to breeding.
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OnPoint: Dear Labour Caucus, in reply to ,
As opposed to sexual orientation, class position can shift.
Yes, true, and that's another reason why it's a thorny area to discuss. Being born rich or poor doesn't mean you have to stay that way, but it sure is easier to be rich if you were born rich.
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OnPoint: Dear Labour Caucus, in reply to Kumara Republic,
We are indeed a classless nation – that is, in the institutionalised British sense. What’s emerged instead is a de facto caste system as seen in America, where celebrities and executives have effectively become lords and barons by another name. It’s all the more so with unskilled hands being made obsolete by machines and industrial globalisation.
True. And that means the language of class comes across as dubious to people, because it's not a perfect fit. It's easier to rail against the idle rich if they all have funny accents and wear top hats and monocles. Harder to get a good hate on if you can't dehumanise them because they talk the way you do and wear the same kinds of clothes only newer.
Which comes back to (my interpretation of) Gio's point: "identity politics" has a lot to teach people about communication. In particular, I think one of the most important concepts the world could use right now is that acknowledging privilege is different from wallowing in guilt.
I believe that lasting social change occurs when groups who have privilege give it up voluntarily. If they have it taken from them, they'll only try to get it back.
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OnPoint: Dear Labour Caucus, in reply to Russell Brown,
Public Address Discussions About Public Address Discussions totally give me the shits. Because they have no clear answers.
Discuss.
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OnPoint: Dear Labour Caucus, in reply to giovanni tiso,
I suspect that the people of Trotter’s ilk who lament the influence of identity politics might just be envious of its vocabulary and how it’s succeeded in making privilege visible.
That is astute.
I've often felt that people practice a level of consideration when talking about race or gender or sexual orientation that they abandon when they talk about class. But we have no more choice over the families we're born into than than the bodies we get.
Perhaps one of the reasons that people seem reluctant to talk about class is that they don't know how to talk about it without sounding like they're blaming people for how they were born.
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Hard News: Name That Food Blog, in reply to Kebabette,
Kai Tangata
Too soon.
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OnPoint: Dear Labour Caucus, in reply to BenWilson,
Why can’t I pet the Kiwis, huh?
That's what people always say. Until they've been beaked.