[Xmca-l] Re: The Dialectical Problematic of Resolving the Black WhiteAca.pdf

[Greg Thompson]

​Yes, David, your four lines of the Three Character classic reminds me of
my favorite Jane Addams quote (paraphrased): "All antagonisms are unreal."
(quoted in Louis Menand's book The Metaphysical Club and based on notes
John Dewey sent to his wife Alice regarding his conversations with Addams).
-greg ​

On Thu, Jun 15, 2017 at 7:36 AM, Lplarry <lpscholar2@gmail.com> wrote:

> David,
> I hear a particular wisdom tradition distilled in these 4 lines that has
> offered a mapping for 1000 years
>
> Begin with our common human kind.
>
> Why begin here ?
> (answer) humankind good at root/ground).  This wisdom tradition focusing
> on *good* (at heart)  is the grounding of humankind
>
> Close in Kin :  This focus on what Randall Collins explores as (small
> groupings).  Kin are (close) in their intrinsic essential QUALITIES. Pay
> attention to these small group qualities within which the (good) prevails
> within right practice.
>
> Far in Forms : These forms that multiply being epiphenomenal, generated
> from what is essential – the good at heart which is the ground of humankind.
>
> This presents a message of (hope) within a practice. Randall Collins and
> Goffman indicate the this intimate goodness occurs within small grouping
> events.
> (see Randall Collins book, The Sociology of Philosophies where he sites
> creativity in small group kin like forms
>
>
>
> Sent from my Windows 10 phone
>
> From: David Kellogg
> Sent: June 15, 2017 4:43 AM
> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: The Dialectical Problematic of Resolving the Black
> WhiteAca.pdf
>
> Thanks, Paul. Often, when I read your work, I am set off by this or that.
> For example:
>
> a)  the vastness, almost to the point of vacuity, of the "and" with which
> you propose to link climate change and the achievement gap, (pp. 1-9)
> b) the idea that social class is a "language game",  (3, 5)
> c) the idea that the embourgeoisement of black mustic only began in the
> seventies, (5)
> d) the idea that what black kids need are more remedial programmes in white
> English, and (6)
> e) the lack of any reference to the huge black industrial proletariat whose
> rise and fall was both the precondition and the postscript of the "American
> Century" (1-9),
> f) the number of times you cite yourself in the references! (9).
>
> But then I find that almost each point that sets me off has something that
> sets me back again, in ways that are often just as weird or even weirder.
>
> a) I think that in SOME ways the discourse of prosperity IS linked to
> climate change, but concretely, politically, in the very person of
> the "poor man's idea of a rich man" president we are now enduring
> and in his (fortunately tokenistic) perfidy on the Paris Agreement. I also
> think that the transition of China, from a country that was following the
> model of "get dirty and then wash your hands" to a country which now
> seeks--with considerable success--to be a world leader in the struggle
> against climate change is a model worth considering, not least for the
> so-called "black -white academic gap". (I don't see how subsistence
> agriculture enters into it though.)
> b) Social class is not reducible to a language game, but if I have to
> choose between John McWhorter's view and that of Paul Mocombe, the latter
> has Ruqaiya Hasan--and science--on his side.
> c) Embourgeoisement of black culture was already old in the sixties. But
> something new DID happen in the seventies--and what happened seems to me
> linked with point e).
> d) Remedial programmes based on dialect are not only fruitless--they are
> beside the point, because the "language game" in b) is not chiefly about
> vowel sounds or copular "to be". But programmes based on register--on
> functional literate varieties of whatever dialect you happen to speak. Now
> you're talking...
> e) I remember working on the assembly line at General Motors during the
> seventies to the tune of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5LXTNvJ38w
> It's not a tune you hear today except on youtube. Something happened to
> this music and to the people who sang it along with me, but it was the same
> thing that happened to the industrial proletariat as a whole....
> f) Alongside all the hecatombs of Macombes in the reference list, there is
> an F.E. Frazier! As Halliday likes to say, you shall know names, like
> nouns, by the company they keep....
>
> In China, the remedial reading programme is the Song Dynasty "Three
> Character Classic", a little over a thousand years old now. It begins like
> this:
>
> 人之初，
>
> 性本善。
>
> 性相近，
>
> 習相遠。
> Humankind
> Good at root
> Close in kin
> Far in forms
>
> That is, "Humans in their origins are intrinsically, essentially kind to
> each other. This is because they are close in their intrinsic, essential
> qualities, and they only differ in epiphenomenal, cultural habits."
>
> (I once asked my wife if she ever learned these words as a little girl, and
> she says that they learned to denounce them as reactionary relics of the
> old, black, dark times before liberation in China. Yet to me they just
> mean: "Workers of the world, you have nothing to lose but your chains....")
>
> David Kellogg
> Macquarie University
>
>
> On Thu, Jun 15, 2017 at 10:57 AM, Dr. Paul C. Mocombe <
> pmocombe@mocombeian.com> wrote:
>
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Sent via the Samsung Galaxy Note® 4, an AT&T 4G LTE smartphone
>
>


-- 
Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Anthropology
880 Spencer W. Kimball Tower
Brigham Young University
Provo, UT 84602
http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson