[Martin Elster]

Julie, you may find this interesting:

https://johnmcwhorter.substack.com/p...as-antiracists

https://www.persuasion.community/p/j...the-neoracists

[Jim Moonan]

.

"Julie, you may find this interesting"

https://johnmcwhorter.substack.com/p...as-antiracists

https://www.persuasion.community/p/j...the-neoracists



Martin, I'd lost track of this discussion but came back to see these articles by John McWhorter you've linked. I think he has his finger on the root problems we face in this hyper-charged hate-filled society where it feels danger is lurking everywhere waiting to pounce on anyone who doesn't submit to their suppression (I'm talking about the neo-antiracist movement that McWhorter speaks about in the article). I've heard him speak on NPR a number of times and he's always enlightening.

I'm hoping McWhorter and those like him have the president's ear. —More than that, I hope he finds a way to galvanize his ideas/views to confront the cancel culture vultures and the neo-antiracist movement that have hacked American discourse and jeopardizes American civil rights progress (and erodes the American Constitution) for decades to come if they are not stopped. Leave them out on an island with the far-right and let the center rejuvenate and flourish.

.

[Martin Elster]

Jim, I, too think he has a finger on the root problems. I just saw this article, which just came out. It is totally related to this thread.

Translating Amanda Gorman

Is experiencing white supremacy all she is? And if not, why do her translators have to be people just like her?

John McWhorter

Our racial reckoning has put many new ideas afloat. One of them is that a black female poet’s work should only be translated by other black female people. Or at least black people.

And so, a Dutch translator had the assignment of translating new American youth poet laureate Amanda Gorman’s work withdrawn, and now a Catalan translator has had his translation of her Inauguration poem, which he had already completed, denied publication.

The logic is supposed to be that only someone of Gorman’s race, and optimally gender, can effectively translate her expression into another language. But is that true? And are we not denying Gorman and black people basic humanity in – if I may jump the gun – pretending that it is?

After all, we all know that overall, a vast amount of translation is happening all the time, and always has, by people quite unlike the original authors. The Anglophone experiences Tales of Genji as rendered by someone not Japanese. We experience the Bible through the work of people quite thoroughly un-Mesopotamian.

Notice I didn’t mention Shakespeare translated into other languages. According to the Critical Race Theory paradigm that informs this performative take on translating Gorman, Shakespeare being a white man means that white translators of his work are akin to him, while non-white ones, minted in a world where they must always grapple with whiteness “centered,” are perfect bilinguals of a sort.

But Murasaki Shikibu and the authors of the Bible were not “white,” and yet we see no crime in experiencing their work mediated through whites’ translation. And no, it isn’t that those books are from the past but that now we are walking on into a brave new world. When the next white scholarly specialist in China offers a translation of Confucius or even a modern Chinese work of fiction, we will hear not a thing about “appropriation.”

Yet a Dutch or Catalan translator of Amanda Gorman cannot be white. To highlight what a very right-now pose this is, recall that Alice Walker’s The Color Purple has been rendered in 25 languages including Chinese, and no one has batted an eye.

Again, some will try that even this needs to be revisited (i.e. a black spoken-word poet daughter of African immigrants in Berlin should do a new German translation of The Color Purple because it would sound more like what Alice Walker, um … wrote? … felt? … is?) and that Gorman provides us with an opportunity to start doing things the right way.

But the question is this: why is it that being black American renders one especially untranslatable by whites?

The idea is that American blackness is a special case here. The legacy of white racism, and manifestations of white supremacy still present, mean that the rules are different when it comes to who should translate a black person’s artistic statements. Our oppression at the hands of whites is something so unique, something so all-pervasive, something so all-defining of our souls and experience, that no white person could possibly render it in another language.

This is a fair evocation of what our modern paradigm on blackness teaches us. Power differentials, and especially ones based on race, are all and everything, justifying draconian alterations of basic procedure and, if necessary, even common sense.

However, note how much this portrait diminishes, say, Gorman. To her credit, she was not the one who suggested the Dutch translator be canned. After all, are we really to say that this intelligent young human being’s entirety is the degree to which she may experience white “supremacy”?

Watch out for the “Nobody said that” game. No, no one states that experience of white supremacy is all she is, but if we insist that her poetry can only be translated by someone who has experienced it, this means that the experience of white supremacy is paramount in our estimation of her. Example: we presumably don’t care if a white translator might be better at evoking other aspects of her such as her youth, her sense of scansion – what matters most is her oppression.

It goes further. Are black women’s experiences of white supremacy from one nation to another identical? Consult more than one interview with black Nigerian Chimamanda Adichie to find the answer. To assume that a black Dutch daughter of Surinamese immigrants in Amsterdam is “black” in the same way as Amanda Gorman, with the same experiences, background sentiments, assumptions, etc. is dehumanizing of diversity among people of color. Not to mention localist, parochial – although I understand the white publishers’ urge to show that they are doing the “work” by figuring that the “supremacy” their kind exert worldwide occasions the same plain old ache anywhere it lands.

But even more. The Catalan translator, Victor Obiols, has translated to acclaim Oscar Wilde and yes, Shakespeare, and is not just a poet but a lyricist. He has also translated a book about Miles Davis with his non-black self! Suppose he is the better artist than the presumably black and young translator the publisher taps instead? We are to assume that the translator’s blackness trumps all questions as to artistic rank. This is a view willfully numb to the discrimination, the sensitivity, the intelligence inherent to art and its evaluation. That is, the art to which Gorman is devoting a career and a soul. And all for what?

Acknowledging that racism exists.

And finally, exactly what might a white translator get wrong? Where are the demonstrations of where a white translator of a black poet or novelist’s work slipped? And as to those who might dredge some up in response to my asking, what’s important is that in this controversy no one is bringing them up (at least to prominent view) and no commentators have seemed especially likely to have any examples on the tips of their tongues or iPhones. We are dealing in a hypothetical.

Here’s an illustration of the peril – and emptiness – in hypotheticals like this. Samuel L. Jackson claimed in an interview about about Get Out that Daniel Kaluuya, as a British rather than American black man, was incapable of accurately portraying how a black man actually feels when encountering a police car. This was invaluable in two ways.

First, note that Jackson wants to split hairs even more than our publishers, so that you have to be black American to “translate,” as it were, a black American experience – despite that Brits Idris Elba and Thandie Newton do pitch-perfect renditions of black Americanness to no complaint.

But second, note that we seek for Jackson to show just where Kaluuya fell short – and obviously, he couldn’t. Could those disqualifying the Dutch translator – nonbinary, for the record, and thus likely well-versed in what it is to be “different” and even mistreated – seriously point out just how they were going to go wrong? If Obiols ever shows us his Gorman translation, where in it will anyone be able to say that he chose terms or rhythms or nuances too “white”? We might also keep in mind that he is Catalonian – he has known, in relation to Spain, certain matters having to do with subordination and threatened otherness. But no matter.

This is how we are to process blackness according to the tenets of Critical Race Theory. A fashionable current among its adherents is to claim that their critics are merely misinformed churls seeking Twitter hits. But if CRT adherents cheer this decision about Gorman’s translators, they are showing that misinformation is not the only reason so many are devoting themselves to reigning in CRT’s excesses. The grounds for firing these translators – and we can be sure, others over the next few weeks – are thoroughly contestable by thoroughly unchurlish people including ones who care naught about Twitter.

The grounds for these dismissals are a posture, handy for those with a need to show that they understand what white supremacy is, while turning a blind eye to their reduction of Gorman to a thin, pitiable abstraction. Onward indeed.

https://johnmcwhorter.substack.com/p...KUPhRt3S99_ra4

[Brian Allgar]

The logical reductio ad absurdum is that only the author should be allowed to translate his or her own work, since no one else has exactly the same combination of ethnicity and personal experience. Duh! The cretins strike again.

[Mark McDonnell]

Hi Julie,

I'm back, ha! Thanks for your kind words and for being so gracious in accepting some of my points. That’s rare. I probably said most of what I had to say about the Anders Carlson-Wee and Michael Dickman poems in threads discussing them at the time. The former is more pertinent to this current debacle because it concerns a poet speaking through rather than about someone from a different racial background so I’ll say a bit more about it. I still think the criticism of Carlson-Wee's poem was unnecessary in the level of its vitriol and more importantly that the apology by The Nation was not only a bad decision but in its wording one of the more stupid and craven things I've heard poetry editors say. The poet's own apology was understandable, if disappointing. He just wanted to get a mob off his back. But the editors words, "As poetry editors, we hold ourselves responsible for the ways in which the work we select is received" still make me rub my eyes in disbelief. I also wonder about this statement: "We are sorry for the pain we have caused to the many communities affected by this poem". Really? Whole communities were affected and caused pain by this little poem? Where is the evidence of that? Roxanne Gay’s criticism that “Framing blackness as monolithic is racist. It is lazy” looks quite ironic in the light of this statement. I think the editors are the ones guilty of this by assuming that if a bunch of people on Twitter (both black and white btw) claim offense then that must mean that all black people (or disabled people – the poem was also accused of “ableism”) would be equally pained and offended. To me, this seems more a case of “framing blackness as monolithic” than anything the poem does. I think to read the poem and conclude, as Gay seems to, that the poet thinks all black people talk like this and/or are homeless is to read it in very bad faith. Here it is (with its now permanently appended apology)

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.the.../how-to/tnamp/

I’m afraid I actually quite liked the poem. I think it’s a pretty effective little persona poem or character sketch that does a lot in a short space. Nothing about the voice seemed inauthentic to me and nothing about the representation of the character felt stereotyped or derogatory. The speaker comes across as intelligent, justifiably cynical and yet compassionate towards the unseen listener of the poem’s dramatic monologue. Most of the criticism seemed to be that the poet had dared to use AAVE at all. Roxanne Gay initially tweeted “Don’t use AAVE. Don’t even try it. Know your lane.” Some, including Gay, also claimed their objection was that the poem used AAVE incorrectly. But I couldn’t find one critic, including Gay, who backed these claims up with actual linguistic evidence. Prominent black linguist John McWhorter, who has since popped up on this thread, seemed to think the poem’s use of AAVE was authentic enough.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/ar...nglish/566867/


I don’t think Carlson-Wee’s poem is amazing, but I think it passes all four of your factors in “determining whether getting out of one's lane is acceptable” and I would be confident in saying why (don't worry, I'm not going to -- unless you ask):

1. Goodwill vs. Selfishness. Does the artist's main motive in attempting this representation seem to be that of promoting deeper or broader understanding? Or does the artist seem to be more motivated by a desire to exploit a trendy or exotically novel theme for profit (monetary, political, or notoriety/publicity-wise)?

2. Enough Respect to Do One's Homework. Has the artist done the proper research to make sure that the depiction does not mis-represent any aspects of the other culture, gender, etc.? Or is the artist simply relying on readymade clichés and unexamined stereotypes?

3. The Fairness of Any Implied Broader Implications. Are the strengths and flaws of these fictional characters--and yes, all fictional characters must be flawed in order to have any verisimilitude or interest--likely to be taken as applying to others with the same cultural or gender traits? And if so, is that a fair implication?

4. Quality of the Resulting Work. Obviously it's much easier to look kindly on a depiction if it is part of something excellent.

Of course, all of these factors are up for debate and the last one is particularly subjective. But the likelihood of someone like an Ishiguro emerging in the future, someone successfully and brilliantly “getting out of their lane”, will be slim if the price for failure is to be public humiliation, forced self-abasement and begging for forgiveness. Why would any well-meaning writer ever bother trying? Autobiography and lived experience will be the only acceptable forms of imaginative fiction. Ok, I’m slippery sloping…am i?

The idea that “people in privileged groups should not try to speak for people who have traditionally not had the experience of speaking for themselves, but who may be perfectly capable of speaking for themselves now” just seems like an unworkable edict to me. Carlson-Wee was largely attempting to speak for, and about the issues facing, homeless people, not black people. He chose to write in a voice suggesting his persona was black, presumably because in the US you are seven times more likely to experience homelessness if you are black. Homeless people are a group who still don’t have much opportunity to speak for themselves, aren't they? How do we know that the poet had not experienced homelessness himself or that someone close to him or in his family had? Did anyone bother to ask? Who, under the edicts of these literary rules, would be more capable and justified to write about black homelessness – a white man who had experienced homelessness or a black writer who had not? Would skin colour still be the deciding factor? What if a white poet had a black close friend who had experienced homelessness but had no aptitude for writing? Would it really be wrong for his poet friend to try to give voice to their experience? The idea of making taboo the poetic instinct of empathising with suffering seems wrong to me on an emotional level and fraught with logical inconsistencies on a practical level. People should be free to write about what they want.

The argument is, I suppose, that if privileged white people are writing about this stuff then marginalised voices don’t get heard. I understand this but it would be more persuasive if the vast majority, or even many, of the poems written by white people were of this type. But as you were saying earlier to conny, they aren’t. You characterise poems addressing race written by white people as just one of many tired tropes:

And I am rather tired of hearing certain patterns and tropes presented by White male poets. Just as, presumably, you (and I) are also tired of certain patterns and tropes presented by trying-to-be-woke-and-not-always-succeeding White feminists like me.

It's like any other well-worn theme: The love poem. The cancer poem. The implicitly self-congratulatory poem about the magic of poetry-writing. The immigrant grandmother hagiography poem. The "my mostly-comfortable pandemic experience" poem. The angry feminist poem (which is, alas, the bulk of my poetic output, most of which I will never show to anyone because it so rarely rises above self-therapy and cliché).

So, too, the "I'm a White man, and I have something to say about racism" poem.

I would suggest that of these tropes, the "I'm a White man, and I have something to say about racism" strain is probably the rarest (at least in liberal publications – places like The Society of Classical Poets have their own agendas). It perhaps seems more prevalent than it is because whenever it does happen there is a big old fuss. If a white poet speaks about race with anything other than the blandest show of performative allyship, if they show any sign of wrestling with feelings of ambivalence, or attempts at nuance, they are subject to accusations of racism and demands for apologies (see Dickman, Wee, Hoagland). The culture tells white people, rightly, that they must reckon with race, think deeply about it, but at the same time remain silent or tread very, very carefully and only say the prescribed things or risk public shaming. This is a pretty Kafkaesque trap and anti-art.

Also, the idea that poets of colour are necessarily marginalised seems debatable. I googled “best poetry books of the decade” and the very first hit was the massive, mainstream website “literaryhub”.

https://lithub.com/the-10-best-poetr...of-the-decade/

Their list for 2000 to 2019 comprises books by the following poets:

Ann Carson
Terence Hayes
Tracy K Smith
Natalie Diaz
Natasha Trethewey
Mary Szybist
Claudia Rankine
Robin Coste Lewis
Ocean Vuong
Danez Smith

Of these poets, seven of the ten are poets of colour (and seven are women). And of the list the ones that seem to me to have been the most celebrated (Hayes, Rankine and Vuong) are among these poets of colour. That’s without even mentioning Rupi Kaur, the best-selling poet since Homer, and Amanda Gorman who is no doubt set to overtake her.

Julie, I hope it’s clear that I’m pointing this out with no bitterness. I genuinely think it’s a good thing that these voices are being heard and celebrated and I'm not about to write a Bob Hickock style essay fretting about my whiteness being usurped. I honestly couldn't care less. I just think it’s disingenuous, and oddly defeatist given this evidence, to claim that POC voices aren’t getting heard in the poetry world on issues regarding race to the extent that it’s imperative to prescribe that white poets “don’t get to speak” about them.

Finally on this, and most subjectively I suppose, there is just something about the current appetite on social media for demands that people apologise for producing and publishing art that gives me a quite viscerally negative reaction. And there is something about the morally superior tone of these demands and the expectation that even the subsequent apology, rather than being individual and thoughtful, must contain no deviation from an approved script (“do better”, “I promise to do the work”, “the hurt and pain I have caused”, “take time to reflect deeply”) that makes me nervous. And it’s never enough. When Carlson-Wee issued his apology on social media he said the criticism had been “eye-opening” and the first reply chastised him for his use of this term, noting that it was a further instance of his “ableism”, presumably because it could be offensive to blind people. There’s no indication that this reply was from a parody account.

Erm…what else. The two writers you quote as evidence that most, or even a lot of, black people do see Gorman’s poem as “sacred”. Well, one of them is white and, as you point out yourself, both are from religious publications so I remain unconvinced.

Here:

I don't quite follow your gist about identity politics having zero impact on the lives of the poorest and most disadvantaged in society. Or do you mean that the "anti-art decisions" make no difference to these people's situations?

Yes, I meant what I consider to be "anti-art" decisions make no difference to ordinary people of colour. I just worded it badly and strangled my syntax. "Identity Politics" is a much-maligned term (especially by the right, which is part of the problem liberals have with criticising any aspect of it) but I realise that as a concept it is a broad church and has many positives and does much that is good.

As to John McWhorter’s take, unsurprisingly I agree with a lot of what he says about this. I came across him when I taught (very) basic linguistics to an A Level English class a couple of years ago. I’m no expert and was always just about two pages of the text book ahead of the students. But we had pictures on the wall of McWhorter, Chomsky, Pinker and David Crystal, all of whom were part of the curriculum (the students gave them all nicknames based on their appearance: in order, Smiley, Prof, Hairy and Santa). He seems very smart and a reasonable voice to me. I’m not sure I agree with Jim that he needs to “have the president’s ear”. This is a phenomenon whose trajectory in one way or another is going to be based on people looking into their own hearts with some clear minded honesty. I think it's something politics is best kept out of. After all, Trump claimed to be a big critic of Critical Race Theory (despite probably having no idea what it is) which is poison to anyone reasonably minded who might also express any misgivings about any of its ideas, as popularised by the likes of Robin DiAngelo for example. I also don’t think that this ideology has much to do with “the left” as I understand it and as someone who considers himself to be on the left (if that means things like high-taxation of the very wealthy, public ownership, equality of social opportunity, a strong safety net for the poorest in society) I don’t recognise much of that in the priorities of the people instigating these “cancel culture” spats.

Anyway, thanks again, Julie. It’s always a pleasure. Goodness, white people can talk can’t they?

[Julie Steiner]

Hey there, Mark! Cross-posted. But re your final line, I'll confess that I was a little paranoid when I posted the VIDA Count that someone might analyze my word count in this thread compared with everyone else's....

Good, solid counterarguments again, Mark. This weekend I'll reconsider some of of the points you raised.

Martin and Jim,

Unsurprisingly, since I'm not a fan of John McWhorter anyway, I am less than enthusiastic about his point of view on this subject. He has a very fine mind, but he seems to be missing a heart sometimes.

I often get the impression that McWhorter's number one priority when he speaks on race is to battle what might be the main racial injustice that affects him personally--namely, the intolerable notion that anyone might think that he, as a cultured and intellectual Black man at the peak of his career, has anything in common with the lower-class Black men for whom the Black Lives Matter movement is demanding justice: George Floyd, Philando Castile, et al.

I concede that that assuming some sort of kinship based solely on the fact that he's a Black man, too, is racist. But it's disappointing that he doesn't seem to feel any sort of kinship just based on the fact that they are fellow human beings.

His essays and interviews repeatedly seem to deny these murdered Black men any empathy whatsoever, because he's so busy trying to undermine what he calls the Black Lives Matter movement's portrayal of Black men (and by extension himself) as vulnerable victims in need of protection. McWhorter is wonderfully colorblind in this regard: he doesn't seem to care about the plight of either the Black or the White victims of police violence, except for the purposes of normalizing and trivializing what the police do in lower-class neighborhoods so far from his own that they might as well be hypothetical.

By attempting to demonstrate his lack of racism, McWhorter reveals his classism. It seems he is willing to deny others' victimhood just to avoid being mistaken for a pathetic figure himself. But that's not a good look, either.

In his essay about the Gorman translation debacle, he attacks ridiculous "liberal" arguments that no liberals actually made by applying these to the translation of Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, etc., and then he actually has the nerve to say 'Watch out for the “Nobody said that” game' (regarding Gorman's relationship to white supremacy).

I found an article in Medium by Haidee Kotze, a professor of translation studies at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, far more insightful that McWhorter's take. Some snippets (bolding mine, in case people want to jump to the bit that particularly struck me):

Deul's critique of the [publisher's] choice [to commission Rijneveld, who has never before translated a book] has been subsequently misinterpreted, so it is worth spending a moment on making clear exactly what it is that she said, to begin with. She highlights the mismatch between the shared lived experiences of the black Gorman and the white Rijneveld, and the lack of experience of Rijneveld (in respect of translation), and even questions why the publisher, Meulenhoff, nevertheless describes Rijneveld as the "dream translator" of Gorman. Deul's point, though, is not principally that the mismatch in backgrounds, and Rijneveld's lack of experience, make them unsuitable as translator. Rather it is that the decision for Rijneveld signals trust in Rijneveld's ability to convey this culturally significant work in another language--trust which is not generally afforded to people of color:

     "Whether in fashion, art, work, politics or literature, the merits and
     qualities of black people are only sporadically valued--if they are even
     even noticed, to begin with. And this is particularly so for black women,
     who are systematically marginalised."

Deul's question is why, for this particular text, in this particular context, given its significance, Meulenhoff chose not to opt for a young, black, female, spoken-word artist. Joe Biden's choice of Gorman as reader of her own poem at his inauguration created a particular configuration of cultural value around precisely those qualities. Gorman's visibility, as a young black woman, matters: She is part of the message. The choice of translator, in this case, is similarly part of the message. It's about the opportunity, the space for visibility created by the act of translation, and who gets to occupy that space.

In choosing Rijneveld as translator, the publisher missed an opportunity to carry the importance of this visibility into the Dutch cultural space by giving a black translator the same 'podium' as Gorman represents. In all likelihood, Meulenhoff did not do so purposely. This does not make it any better; perhaps it even makes it worse. The choice may not reflect a conscious, deliberate unwillingness to give voice, space, and visibility to black artists in the Netherlands. But its non-intentionality may perhaps be even more damning: It suggests that the importance of the decision--the possibility, the gravity of what Gorman's poem, and platform, represents--did not even occur to the publisher. Such is the extent of the blindspot. The publisher asked the question: "Is Rijneveld a suitable translator?" rather than "Who would be a suitable (or even the best) translator, for this particular text in this context?"

[...]

The question raised by Deul is not principally about who ‘may’ (who has permission) or even ‘can’ (is able to) write or translate particular experiences. The question is who is, institutionally, given the space to articulate this experience, to participate, to be visible. Who gets to have a seat at the table? A place on the podium? A prize? An interview or column in the newspaper? The exclusions, historically and contemporary, along race and gender lines, among others, are clear. The point is how institutions, like publishers, can work towards more inclusivity.

Amen, amen, amen....

[Mark McDonnell]

Good, solid counterarguments again, Mark. This weekend I'll reconsider some of of the points you raised.

I'll read whatever you have to say with interest, Julie because you're always thought provoking. But I'm probably done here now. Not because I think I'm right about all this stuff, though. Often, when I make a statement my head says 'on the other hand' but if I expressed all those internal arguments my posts would be twice the length. God forbid. I'm already so far up on my high horse I can't see the ground. It's complex. Life is complex. I do think there are many who engage in the "culture war" as a kind of compulsive game, on both the right and the left.

Take care.