Group Bias & Black Pigeon Speaks [live ver.]

Hello Suzie, Unfortunately this discussion runs headlong into a problem that makes anthropology simultaneously prestigious and incredibly difficult to communicate: it's conceptual and theoretical frameworks are altogether distinct and quite often hostile to those employed by other Western disciplines. For example, you use the term 'culture', and even though anthropology has often been defined as 'the science/study of culture', the discipline has never been able to establish a consensual definition of culture, and ever since Roy Wagner published the "The Invention of Culture" in the late 70s the discipline has been split in a debate of whether that concept has any validity at all (culture is a fairly recent European concept that emerged in the 18th century as biological metaphor meaning intellectual sophistication, a cultured person was one who had refined their intellect). Anthropology is, historically, one of the disciplines that patrols the boundaries of western knowledge and localizes them, which means that it often finds itself conflicting with the presuppositions and common sense assumptions of other disciplines. The consequence of this is that the very framing of the issue of 'in group - out group' would already be considered fallacious or a projection of European categories. I will try to give some examples as best I can. Ethnonames: already in the 1930s with Levi-Strauss anthropologists had begun to notice that the vast majority of names attributed to different populations translated to "people", sometimes "good people", sometimes "excellent people". Initially this was unfortunately interpreted as evidence of some inherent ethnocentrism, but it has become clear that most populations simply don't separate themselves from the greater mass of humanity by the use of a noun, so when someone did ask them 'who are you?' they answered 'people' and the name stuck. Names that aren't translatable to 'people' are generally idiosyncratic but almost always have their origin outside the community (examples: 'Jamamadi - People who live in the woods, Parintintin - 'Smelly indians', given to them by the Jesuits because they wouldn't submit, being only pacified in the 1920s). Conviviality, multi-sociality, cannibalism: so conviviality is Joana Overing's argument that by and large indigenous populations of the Americas do not perceive themselves as being part of an abstracted social entity. Instead of a affiliation (I belong to, I am a member of) you have a mesh of lived social relations, so that the boundaries of lived experience are not defined by belonging to a group but the fluid assemblage of who you do things with. Multi sociality (iirc) begins with Levi-Strauss's analysis of the spatial distribution of Bororo villages where houses are distributed in a circular recurring A-B-C pattern, where A B C correspond to different 'clans'. Bororo kinship structures are (iirc) perscriptive endogamous, so that a person from clan A only marries someone from clan A, clan B someone from clan B etc. What Levi Strauss postulates, then, is that a Bororo village is actually three societies superimposed on one another, with the circulation of people occurring internally within each of these. And finally cannibalism (not to be confused with antropophagia) is an ethic whereupon a given society or population does not perceive itself as being self-sufficient, the base functioning of the community presupposes the existence of external communities. For example: Tupinambá required that before a person could be married or begin to accumulate names they had cracked the skull of an enemy, so their society could not function if it existed in isolation. On the other end of the spectrum you have Marshall Sahlin's work with Pacific islander populations, which unlike lowland south american populations have established hierarchies. However the nobility of these people largely did not perceive themselves as being a part of them, being in a state of conjoined opposition. The classical example would be Hawaii, where the nobility had usurped the 'gods', who they saw themselves as being consubstational with. When the Europeans began to arrive the nobles began to take European names and follow European fashions, as the westerners were perceived to be 'new gods' whose mana was visibly superior to the 'old gods' (putting gods in quotations because its actually a horrible mistranslation/projection of Abrahamic religiosity). Hopefully this gives you some idea of how anthropology sees these things. I kind of talked around the phenomena you indicated because I didn't want to spout a bunch of 'well actually' comments, which is a position the discipline often finds itself in. I will, however, say that my attention was drawn to the term 'cultural homeostasis'. I don't know what you meant by this, it's not a term I can recall any anthropologist ever using but it seems to remit to a notion of static or 'cold societies' that the discipline has rejected along with much of its early evolutionist baggage. Tradition, to reference Sahlins, is not the way things are, tradition is the way things change. All the things that are associated with culture like language, rituals, presentation etc are constantly changing, things are constantly being invented and modified. The structuralist perspective that much of anthropology adheres to or is influenced by seeks to understand the underlying logic that orients and informs these changes, not to create an atemporal image of them. Hopefully this has been at least somewhat helpful, I've tried to condense a lot of stuff into something that is at least marginally understandable. If there's anything that interests you specifically or that you want me to explain better please feel free to leave another comment and I'll do my best.

Notenome

In-group out-group alliegances are contingent upon countless factors, you're correct on that. I wonder if kin selection preference, cultural homeostasis tethered to , the specifics of each culture and geography, shows inherent In-group out-group mindset through the necessity of maintaining balance and power structures. This will be in varying degrees based on the level of hierarchy. . --in short I think your view is consistent with this video

Suzie Oh

Hi. Curious what anthro links/studies you can recommend? I mainly do psych and philosophy but only because of the department divisions.

Suzie Oh

Sounds fine to me, as a currently retired music producer/sound designer/audio engineer. @Box of Pizza, try to see whether you activated “Loudness Equalization” in your audio settings if you are using Windows.

Well I just became a backer so I feel a bit awkward about making this kind of comment but here goes: this belief that humans inherently operate in an ingroup/outgroup mentality is really heavily disputed by anthropology. This depends, obviously, on how you define 'group' and this probably isn't particularly relevant to the video since you're talking about groups in a very broad way. But the very notion of an ingroup doesn't really make sense in, for example, exogamous societies (where marriage within the community is seen as incestuous or undesirable). I think what is interesting about the study that you refer to is that the subjects were told they were part of a group and then started acting like it, ie, they conformed to expectations. Societal subdivisions happen continuously, but they are fluid and transitory, an ingroup mentality would require a person to choose any one of a vast number of possible categories and elevate it to being supreme or determinative. While this obviously does happen, as your wonderful video so clearly shows, it's by no means a human universal. Also the audio was absolutely fine as far as I could tell.

Notenome

The audio was decent, but a bit soft, I had to turn up my system volume a bit. Even with the youtube player audio maxed out, it was a bit too quiet for me.

I'm not an expert here and I don't want to tell you how to do your job of course, but I thought it might be an interesting thing in your argument to not only talk about how humans will do ingroup/outgroup stuff no matter what, but also how, in cases of racism and segregation, this is actively exploited for political gain - especially seeing as that seems to be the entire point of BPS video. While obviousoy you do touch on it and it seems to be underlying the video, I thought it might be a good idea to make it clearer/more obvious/just really go in on that point. But hey, I don't know what I'm talking about, really. Great work!

Aless

That “land of the blind” line made me burst out laughing.

Speaking as a descendent of Sicilian immigrants to America, I heard stories about how my great grandfather used to spit on the ground anytime anyone would mention Mussolini and the leftism stopped with my father, a self hating narcissistic white supremacist, and began again with me.

What the fuck, indeed. Are we talking Schrodinger's immigrants, who are the brown hordes when they want to fearmonger and assimilating to white when Black Pigeon wants them to? I mean I'm a mixed race American, who has been recorded on various censuses as a Spanish Surname American (Filipinos often have Spanish surnames and there are a lot of us here), Asian, Other, and Caucasian, because of, you know, assimilation and some very personal mixing. Of course that's anecdotal evidence of how fucked up that pidge is, not actual data. Make of it what you will.

iriandia

At the start you mention some "nitpicks" and it may be me not getting a joke, but I feel you make it clear when you joke about something. I just feel that little things like how long the study has been out for may seem minor, but they help to reinforce the idea that this is new stuff that everyone needs to know because "the media" are hiding it from the public. So even if you do frame it as a joke, maybe make it easier to tell? It also seems to me that how recent a study is gives it more creedence purely because even people on the right think that science = stuff getting better => new science is even more betterer than old science.

John MacDonald

The audio sounds fine to me, and Jen did a great job on the thumbnail! Give yourself a break Shaun!

This is useless feedback I guess but the audio sounds fine to me! His final point (that Latino populations may vote republican in the future) is pretty well known. As a group they're fairly religious and not crazy about governments, the Republicans actually could have had their vote long ago if they hadn't given in to the loony racial purity wing.

Jason Pargin

The audio sounded fine to me too. Good video :)

Another great video. Might want to mention redlining, which is why so many US cities are so racially segregated in the first place.

That stuck out to me as well. Probably could find a non-ableist metaphor, Shaun.

Sloane

I think this whole video is a subtweet at teethgang.

It sounds good to me, but I don't have an ear for minor audio issues.

Alice

Since it appears that the names referenced in the credits are sorted by first name, I have noticed that my name has not appeared. Its no big deal though. Just to confirm, I am currently only supporting at $1.00/ video, is it the $5.00 and higher that gets referenced in credits? In either case, great video as always and I look forward to the next one

There's an excellent two-part episode of This American Life about a town in Alabama that collectively freaked out over Hispanic immigration, raised hell, but then pretty rapidly changed course. Worth a listen: <p><a href="https://www.thisamericanlife.org/632/our-town-part-one" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.thisamericanlife.org/632/our-town-part-one</a></p><p><a href="https://www.thisamericanlife.org/633/our-town-part-two" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.thisamericanlife.org/633/our-town-part-two</a></p>

Just want you to know that I whispered a theatrical "no......." to myself during your brief pause for gasps so nice job on the timing there

Mark Price

I didn't notice any audio problems either. This was really good and I learned all sorts of new things! All through the video I was thinking how grateful I was that BPS's bad faith landed on such an interesting source material, and that you chose it for this video. Anyways I'm super willing to share it with everyone to help you catch up to Hbomb! Although my french friends and family see a video in english and say "ugh, why isn't it subtitled?" which, maybe I could help you put some subtitles on some vids if that would be helpful

Blue Cicada

Catholics. BPS is taking his cue from Huntington, who sees American culture as Anglo-Protestant, and contrasts that with Catholicism, i.e., Irish, Italian, Polish, Mexican, etc.

Levi Reeves

Really great stuff. I reckon you should just post this as is and take some time back for yourself. Audio is fine. You deserve a break! When BPS mentioned Huntington I was hoping you'd discuss him a bit, but really that would be too much of a tangent. If you ever do get round to it, I think the "mainstream", respected intellectuals who become far-right fan favourites, like Huntington and Putnam for example, would make great material for a video.

Levi Reeves

Great vid! I didn't actually notice any problems with the audio, it sounded just fine.

I very much enjoyed this one, thanks Shaun. That is a great thumbnail as well. I'll go and follow you over on twitch now.

Charlotte Sisman

Great video as always Shaun. One comment: the line at 11:50 calling YouTube "the land of the blind" made me wonder if that use of metaphorical blindness could offend, so maybe it should be changed- but see what others think because I don't really know anything

Misty Burrows

Awww bummer, I was looking for my name in the credits but I guess I got muscled out by nicer names.

Spoodle

what about shaun_bateau

good video man, looking in the credits though there seems to be an oliver moran but not oliver moron? idk if its a mistake or something but i assume the moron became moran. is it fixable? love you heaps, oliver x

re: BPS's claim about assimilation into "anglo-protestant values" -- what the fuck does he think irish and italian immigrants were? he had to step carefully around the fact that hispanic values are western values, are christian values, are largely conservative values... more proof he knows he's lying

I'm half mexican &amp; half iranian and I've assimilated all kinds of nonsense. I've got opinions on Batman goddammit!

malpertuis

I don’t know if ‘Schrödinger’s immigrant’ is a good joke to add there or not but if it is, you can steal it

I didn't watch the BPS video, but based on your description, I assumed he was just suggesting that there's some element of hypocrisy among progressives. I'll have to suck it up and watch his video, as much as I don't want to. Thanks for this video. As someone who grew up in rural Southern Ohio, settled in a Chicago suburb, and is now living in Berkeley, it rings true.