Idea totally ripped off from Gary Dauphin’s Should I use blackface in my blog? flowchart. I find Visio a lot easier to work with, though it doesn’t allow any sort of easy image mapping in HTML that I can tell. More tinkering is clearly needed.
Meanwhile, I present for your enjoyment an examination of how fraught it is to compare one group’s sufferings or civil rights to another as a rhetorical ploy. Any well-intended feedback is appreciated.
Most of this work done during idle moments during my at-work office hours (where I assist with open management and scheduling issues w/in the group).
Flowchart regarding the use of comparisons with real groups in rhetoric.
Tags: flowchart · foolishness · ibarw · isms · rhetoric5 Comments
5 responses so far ↓
That’s great, especially the remarks addressed to the alien. I wonder, however, about the punctuation in the center red hexagon. Shouldn’t there be a space between “More” and “so”? Other than that little nitpick, I actually think I like your flowchart better than the original.
Interestingly, “moreso” is not in the Merriam-Webster, but is apparently in the OED, credited to the U.S. I don’t have access to the OED myself, but here’s a discussion of “moreso”, its usage, meaning and etymology.
Given that I am in the U.S., I shall cling to its anachronism and keep it in the chart.
I still really like the blackface flowchart. Maybe if I incorporate clip-art or get more snarky. I think I have not yet really attained the attended snarkiness, but then I wax and wane about the usefulness of snarkiness/satire in anti-racist/anti-*-ist dialogue.
OK, so I’m feeling a teeny bit caught with my pants down. My apologies if my LJ post from this weekend caused you any offense.
The chart is helpful and funny.
I do have a question which may or may not be relevant to the chart. The chart’s purpose is to nip *statements* of analogy in the bud, yes? To catch folks in the middle of their assumption-making before they say something unhelpful/stupid/offensive/etc.
Do you think there is room anywhere in there to inquire about or explore possible analogies? Or does that already imply enough assumption to be a bad idea? How would you work that line of thinking into the chart, or is it a separate issue?
Let me just say that I did not write this in response to your latest writing. It was in response to this thread instead, in which you will see I have said the same thing over and over and over and over again to montieth.
Per your other questions, I will think about them and get back to you. I simply don’t know. They are good questions, and as the flowchart indicates, my blanket assumption is that comparisons of one group to another in the context of oppression is generally a bad idea, and should only be done if you think really carefully about it and can approach it from a position as free as possible of unexamined privilege.
[...] asked me in a recent comment whether I thought were any useful analogies to be made in the -isms spaces. I responded that while [...]