Split Historical Genocide - Derail From Sudan Massacre

[NoHolyCows]

Your description is wrong, so any argument built on it needs to be thrown out.

Nothing in my argument depends on you having used the words “soft” or “harmless,” so there’s nothing to throw out.

That line was me characterizing how modest your revised claim is compared to what you actually wrote earlier. The core of what I’ve been pushing back on isn’t that label, it’s your own statements like:

“No I’m treating fixed identity as something that did not exist before colonial modernity.”

“the identity categories they are using… operate under a colonial logic that did not exist in antiquity.”

“ethic cleansing is a modern and European thing.”

Whether you like my shorthand or not doesn’t touch the substance, you did frame fixed, inescapable identity as something that “did not exist” before colonial modernity and ethnic cleansing as “a modern and European thing.” Me pointing out that this goes beyond “modern states enforce identity more tightly” is not an error in description; it’s just taking your own wording seriously.

NHC

 

[NoHolyCows]

Those aren’t “isolated phrases,” they’re the spine of your position. They go beyond “modern systems add a state apparatus” to “this kind of fixed, inescapable identity didn’t exist before colonial modernity and that’s why ethnic cleansing is a modern and European thing.” You can’t now say your “only point” was about the apparatus when you explicitly framed the identity logic itself as something that “did not exist” in earlier periods.

I’ve clarified this multiple times, and you keep ignoring those clarifications so you can nitpick wording instead of addressing the argument itself. At this point it’s obvious you’re hanging onto a loose phrase because you can’t refute the actual distinction. Every time I explain what I meant, you call it “walking it back,” even though I’ve repeated the same clarification over and over.

Jimmy tried pointing this out to you earlier, but you were too busy insisting I must forever stand by the clumsiest version of my wording. I didn’t factor in that you’d latch onto a minor phrasing issue just to dodge the only argument I’m actually making.

I don’t have any problem with clarification. People clean up their wording all the time, that’s normal. What I’m not going to do is pretend this is all about one “loose phrase” when the lines I’m quoting aren’t a single slip, they’re a pattern you leaned on repeatedly.

You didn’t just once say something clumsy and then correct it. You wrote:

“No I’m treating fixed identity as something that did not exist before colonial modernity.”

“the identity categories they are using… operate under a colonial logic that did not exist in antiquity.”

“ethic cleansing is a modern and European thing.”

That’s not me hunting for one bad sentence, that’s you explicitly tying the identity logic itself to a modern European/colonial break and saying it “did not exist” before. When I point out what those lines add up to, that’s not dodging the argument, that is engaging the argument as you actually presented it.

If what you want to stand by now is the narrower version, “modern states racialized identity, built census categories, and enforce boundaries more rigidly than ancient empires”, then fine, that’s a different and much more modest claim, and we agree on most of it. But you can’t rewrite the thread so that the stronger “did not exist in antiquity / modern and European thing” framing was never part of your position and then blame everyone else for taking your own words seriously.

NHC

 

[Gospel]

You’re treating “did not exist” like I meant it in some absolute metaphysical sense, when the context made it obvious I was talking about the specific form of fixed, inescapable identity tied to modern racial logic and state structures. I clarified that multiple times. You keep pretending that clarification doesn’t count because....... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Ancient societies had inherited identities, yes. I’ve never denied that. What they did not have, and what I clearly meant, was the modern form of rigid, racialized, bureaucratically enforced identity categories that make assimilation impossible. That’s the distinction you keep flattening. You’re not “taking my wording seriously,” you’re taking your most literal and clumsy reinterpretation of it and ignoring every clarification I’ve made so you don’t have to address the argument itself without fashioning yourself an exit strategy.

If you insist on holding me hostage to the roughest possible reinterpretation instead of the clarified meaning I’ve repeated, you’re not engaging in good faith my boi.

I think the closest you came to a strong argument was when you brought up the rapes and forced marriages committed by the Arab militias.

 

[Gospel]

I don’t have any problem with clarification. People clean up their wording all the time, that’s normal. What I’m not going to do is pretend this is all about one “loose phrase” when the lines I’m quoting aren’t a single slip, they’re a pattern you leaned on repeatedly.

You didn’t just once say something clumsy and then correct it. You wrote:

“No I’m treating fixed identity as something that did not exist before colonial modernity.”

“the identity categories they are using… operate under a colonial logic that did not exist in antiquity.”

“ethic cleansing is a modern and European thing.”

That’s not me hunting for one bad sentence, that’s you explicitly tying the identity logic itself to a modern European/colonial break and saying it “did not exist” before. When I point out what those lines add up to, that’s not dodging the argument, that is engaging the argument as you actually presented it.

If what you want to stand by now is the narrower version, “modern states racialized identity, built census categories, and enforce boundaries more rigidly than ancient empires”, then fine, that’s a different and much more modest claim, and we agree on most of it. But you can’t rewrite the thread so that the stronger “did not exist in antiquity / modern and European thing” framing was never part of your position and then blame everyone else for taking your own words seriously.

Okay, so you acknowledge the clarification, but you’re rejecting it because you think you’ve spotted a pattern. Fine. Then let’s take this one step at a time: what exactly do you think ‘colonial logic’ means?

 

[NoHolyCows]

You’re treating “did not exist” like I meant it in some absolute metaphysical sense, when the context made it obvious I was talking about the specific form of fixed, inescapable identity tied to modern racial logic and state structures. I clarified that multiple times. You keep pretending that clarification doesn’t count because....... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I’m not treating it metaphysically, I’m taking it the way you yourself framed it, “fixed identity as something that did not exist before colonial modernity” and “ethnic cleansing is a modern and European thing” and “this logic did not exist in antiquity.” Those are your words, not me doing philosophy with a stray adverb.

That said, I’ve never said clarification “doesn’t count.” You’ve explained several times that what you say you mean is “the specific modern form of fixed identity tied to racial ideology and state categories.” I’ve acknowledged that and I’ve agreed that this modern form is historically specific. The disagreement is not over whether you can clarify; it’s over the fact that even in the clarified version, you’re still treating the underlying logic as a clean break instead of as a hardening and formalizing of older patterns.

Ancient societies had inherited identities, yes. I’ve never denied that. What they did not have, and what I clearly meant, was the modern form of rigid, racialized, bureaucratically enforced identity categories that make assimilation impossible. That’s the distinction you keep flattening. You’re not “taking my wording seriously,” you’re taking your most literal and clumsy reinterpretation of it and ignoring every clarification I’ve made so you don’t have to address the argument itself without fashioning yourself an exit strategy.

I don’t dispute that the “modern form”, racialized, explicitly biological language plus census categories and ID paperwork is new. That’s the part of your claim I’ve never argued with. Where we’re still apart is in that last clause: “that make assimilation impossible.”

Modern systems say assimilation is impossible for the group as a group, and they write that into law. In practice, even in the modern cases you lean on, there’s always some combination of killing, expulsion and coerced absorption. Some people are killed “as such,” some are driven out, some manage to pass, convert, get taken into other households, or survive in mixed families. That doesn’t make the ideology less murderous; it just means your “assimilation impossible” line, taken seriously, doesn’t describe the messy reality of modern ethnic cleansing either.

So I’m not flattening your distinction. I’m saying yes, there is a distinctive modern apparatus and a distinctive racial language. No, that does not mean the premodern world had nothing that resembles fixed, inherited, hard-to-escape identity tied to collective punishment, and no, it doesn’t mean modern systems actually live up to the total rigidity your slogan suggests.

If you insist on holding me hostage to the roughest possible reinterpretation instead of the clarified meaning I’ve repeated, you’re not engaging in good faith my boi.

What I’m “holding you hostage to” are your own sentences, quoted in full, alongside the clarifications you’ve given. I’ve taken the clarified version seriously, “modern, racialized, state-structured identity categories.” I’ve agreed that they are historically specific. What I won’t do is pretend that your repeated “did not exist in antiquity / modern and European thing / makes assimilation impossible” language was just noise that can be ignored once someone challenges it.

Good faith here means exactly this, I accept your clarification, and then I ask whether even that clarified claim is as sharp as you say it is. My answer is modern Europe took older logics of group-targeted destruction and gave them new language and machinery. That’s a real and important difference. It’s not the same as saying the logic itself suddenly sprang into being in 1850.

I think the closest you came to a strong argument was when you brought up the rapes and forced marriages committed by the Arab militias.

That wasn’t a side note, that’s exactly why I keep saying your “assimilation vs elimination” binary is too clean. Those rapes, forced marriages, and enslavements sit alongside mass killing and expulsion. Within the same campaign, some members of the targeted group are destroyed, some are driven out, some are violently folded into the dominant identity. That is elimination and absorption working together, not a pure case of “no way out in principle.”

The fact that Sudan’s militias use a modern racial script and state-shaped categories is what makes this a contemporary, post-colonial ethnic cleansing. The fact that they also mix killing, expulsion and coerced incorporation is what links it structurally to older patterns you keep insisting are “different in kind.” That’s the tension I’ve been pointing at from the start, whether we talk about Sudan, the Holocaust, or earlier empires.

NHC

 

[NoHolyCows]

I don’t have any problem with clarification. People clean up their wording all the time, that’s normal. What I’m not going to do is pretend this is all about one “loose phrase” when the lines I’m quoting aren’t a single slip, they’re a pattern you leaned on repeatedly.

You didn’t just once say something clumsy and then correct it. You wrote:

“No I’m treating fixed identity as something that did not exist before colonial modernity.”

“the identity categories they are using… operate under a colonial logic that did not exist in antiquity.”

“ethic cleansing is a modern and European thing.”

That’s not me hunting for one bad sentence, that’s you explicitly tying the identity logic itself to a modern European/colonial break and saying it “did not exist” before. When I point out what those lines add up to, that’s not dodging the argument, that is engaging the argument as you actually presented it.

If what you want to stand by now is the narrower version, “modern states racialized identity, built census categories, and enforce boundaries more rigidly than ancient empires”, then fine, that’s a different and much more modest claim, and we agree on most of it. But you can’t rewrite the thread so that the stronger “did not exist in antiquity / modern and European thing” framing was never part of your position and then blame everyone else for taking your own words seriously.

Okay, so you acknowledge the clarification, but you’re rejecting it because you think you’ve spotted a pattern. Fine. Then let’s take this one step at a time: what exactly do you think ‘colonial logic’ means?

When I say “colonial logic,” I’m not waving at some vague bad vibe, I’m talking about a pretty concrete package.

Colonial logic is what you get when a European imperial state builds an administrative machine to rule people from a distance, censuses that freeze messy, local identities into hard boxes; racial hierarchies written into law; “tribes” and “natives” drawn and named to fit the needs of the metropole; borders and categories that then get handed to post-colonial states as if they were natural. In that sense, yes, Sudan today is absolutely operating inside a colonial logic, it’s using an Arab/African hierarchy, borders, and identity paperwork heavily shaped by AngloEgyptian rule, and it’s enforcing violence through those categories.

Where I don’t buy your move is when you treat that colonial package as the moment the logic itself first appears. Colonial logic explains why modern Sudan has these particular identity boxes and why they’re enforced with censuses, ID cards and racial language. It does not follow that the underlying move of “this named people, as such, is marked for destruction or permanent subjugation” only comes into existence with European empire. Saying “the way Sudan is doing this is colonial and modern” is one thing. Saying “the identity logic behind targeting a group as such did not exist in antiquity and is therefore a modern and European thing” is another, and that’s the step I’m not willing to grant.

NHC

 

[Gospel]

That wasn’t a side note, that’s exactly why I keep saying your “assimilation vs elimination” binary is too clean.

Forced marriage is not what separates ancient violence from modern violence. It existed in both. What matters is the identity system surrounding it. In Sudan, forced marriage is happening within a racial hierarchy that comes out of colonial governance, not within the flexible identity systems you find in the ancient world. So yes, it is relevant, but it actually supports my argument, not yours.

Forced marriage in ancient systems functioned as a pathway into the dominant identity. Your identity actually changed. You could be incorporated through marriage, allegiance, adoption, or service, and your children became full members of the new group. That is what situational identity means in practice. Forced marriage in Sudan does not work that way. It does not change identity, it does not grant membership, and it does not erase the racial hierarchy that defines the conflict. It is not a route into the dominant group. It is a weapon used inside a fixed racial system that a person cannot escape. That is the precise difference. Ancient forced marriage absorbed. Modern forced marriage enforces. And that supports my argument, not yours.

 

[Gospel]

Saying “the way Sudan is doing this is colonial and modern” is one thing. Saying “the identity logic behind targeting a group as such did not exist in antiquity and is therefore a modern and European thing” is another, and that’s the step I’m not willing to grant.

So just to be clear, you are denying that assimilation was built into ancient systems. Because if you acknowledge that assimilation was built in, then you have to acknowledge that identity in antiquity was flexible and conditional, not fixed and inescapable. And if you acknowledge that, then you also have to acknowledge that Sudan’s fixed racial categories are operating with a modern identity logic, not an ancient one.

Which part of that chain do you actually disagree with?

 

[Gospel]

Where I don’t buy your move is when you treat that colonial package as the moment the logic itself first appears.

Calling my clarification a “move” signals the problem. You are treating an analytic distinction as if it were a rhetorical tactic. I am not making a move. I am not like you, so stop projecting. I am describing the difference between inherited identity that allowed mobility and incorporation in antiquity, and the fixed identity logic that emerges under colonial administration. One is a conceptual distinction. The other is a narrative framing you are trying to impose on my intent. If you stop treating clarification as strategy and look at the content itself, the difference becomes obvious.

 

[Gospel]

Those aren’t “isolated phrases,” they’re the spine of your position. They go beyond “modern systems add a state apparatus” to “this kind of fixed, inescapable identity didn’t exist before colonial modernity and that’s why ethnic cleansing is a modern and European thing.” You can’t now say your “only point” was about the apparatus when you explicitly framed the identity logic itself as something that “did not exist” in earlier periods.

I’ve clarified this multiple times, and you keep ignoring those clarifications so you can nitpick wording instead of addressing the argument itself. At this point it’s obvious you’re hanging onto a loose phrase because you can’t refute the actual distinction. Every time I explain what I meant, you call it “walking it back,” even though I’ve repeated the same clarification over and over.

Jimmy tried pointing this out to you earlier, but you were too busy insisting I must forever stand by the clumsiest version of my wording. I didn’t factor in that you’d latch onto a minor phrasing issue just to dodge the only argument I’m actually making.

I don’t have any problem with clarification. People clean up their wording all the time, that’s normal. What I’m not going to do is pretend this is all about one “loose phrase” when the lines I’m quoting aren’t a single slip, they’re a pattern you leaned on repeatedly.

You didn’t just once say something clumsy and then correct it. You wrote:

“No I’m treating fixed identity as something that did not exist before colonial modernity.”

“the identity categories they are using… operate under a colonial logic that did not exist in antiquity.”

“ethic cleansing is a modern and European thing.”

That’s not me hunting for one bad sentence, that’s you explicitly tying the identity logic itself to a modern European/colonial break and saying it “did not exist” before. When I point out what those lines add up to, that’s not dodging the argument, that is engaging the argument as you actually presented it.

If what you want to stand by now is the narrower version, “modern states racialized identity, built census categories, and enforce boundaries more rigidly than ancient empires”, then fine, that’s a different and much more modest claim, and we agree on most of it. But you can’t rewrite the thread so that the stronger “did not exist in antiquity / modern and European thing” framing was never part of your position and then blame everyone else for taking your own words seriously.

NHC

Sorry to revisit this but I have no choice being that I have a life. Can you point me to the actual posts where I supposedly said those lines? I tried searching them verbatim and nothing comes up. Copying text without linking to the original comment makes it difficult for me to verify what you are quoting. I think it’s fair to reference the specific post, because otherwise it creates a lot of unnecessary extra work on my end.

 

[NoHolyCows]

That wasn’t a side note, that’s exactly why I keep saying your “assimilation vs elimination” binary is too clean.

Forced marriage is not what separates ancient violence from modern violence. It existed in both. What matters is the identity system surrounding it. In Sudan, forced marriage is happening within a racial hierarchy that comes out of colonial governance, not within the flexible identity systems you find in the ancient world. So yes, it is relevant, but it actually supports my argument, not yours.

Forced marriage in ancient systems functioned as a pathway into the dominant identity. Your identity actually changed. You could be incorporated through marriage, allegiance, adoption, or service, and your children became full members of the new group. That is what situational identity means in practice. Forced marriage in Sudan does not work that way. It does not change identity, it does not grant membership, and it does not erase the racial hierarchy that defines the conflict. It is not a route into the dominant group. It is a weapon used inside a fixed racial system that a person cannot escape. That is the precise difference. Ancient forced marriage absorbed. Modern forced marriage enforces. And that supports my argument, not yours.

You’re trying to make forced marriage do something it just doesn’t do cleanly on either side of the timeline.

In plenty of ancient cases, being taken as a wife or concubine didn’t magically erase stigma and give you or your children full, uncontested membership. There were gradations, legitimate vs illegitimate, “pure” vs “mixed,” households where the woman’s origin mattered for generations. Absorption existed, but it was often partial, conditional, and laced with hierarchy and contempt. That’s not the story of simple, open “pathways” you’re painting.

On the modern side, Sudan is messier than your model too. When Arab militias in Darfur or West Darfur rape, abduct, and forcibly “marry” non-Arab women, they are absolutely enforcing a racial hierarchy. But over time, those women and especially their children are not treated as if they still belong to the original targeted group. They’re trapped in a limbo where their prior identity is erased in practice and their future is bound to the perpetrator’s community, whether that community ever grants them equal status or not. That is exactly how coercive absorption works, you don’t lift the hierarchy, you use violence to fold parts of the targeted group into the dominant one in a subordinate position.

So the neat contrast you’re trying to draw “ancient forced marriage absorbs, modern forced marriage enforces” just doesn’t map onto reality. In both settings, forced marriage is doing double duty, it terrorizes and humiliates the targeted group, and it selectively pulls bodies (and future children) across the line to help break that group as a coherent “us.” The fact that modern Sudan does this inside a racialized, colonial state framework is what makes it modern. The fact that the tactic itself both destroys and partially absorbs is what links it to older patterns, not what cleanly separates it.

NHC

 

[NoHolyCows]

Saying “the way Sudan is doing this is colonial and modern” is one thing. Saying “the identity logic behind targeting a group as such did not exist in antiquity and is therefore a modern and European thing” is another, and that’s the step I’m not willing to grant.

So just to be clear, you are denying that assimilation was built into ancient systems. Because if you acknowledge that assimilation was built in, then you have to acknowledge that identity in antiquity was flexible and conditional, not fixed and inescapable. And if you acknowledge that, then you also have to acknowledge that Sudan’s fixed racial categories are operating with a modern identity logic, not an ancient one.

Which part of that chain do you actually disagree with?

No, I’m not denying that assimilation was built into ancient systems. I’ve said more than once that it was. Rome, Persia, China and others absolutely had structured ways for some conquered people to move “up” or be folded in.

Where I disagree with you is in the leap you’re making from that fact. You’re treating it like a clean either/or, if assimilation exists, then identity in antiquity must have been flexible and conditional; if identity is fixed and inescapable, then assimilation cannot exist at all. That isn’t how real systems work, ancient or modern.

You can have both at once, identities that are formally inherited, stigmatized and extremely hard to shed, and at the same time a set of narrow, unequal routes where some individuals, in some circumstances, get absorbed, pass, or are reclassified. That is how caste orders, slave lineages and “tainted blood” regimes worked long before colonial modernity. It is also how modern genocidal systems work in practice, whatever their ideology says. Nazi Germany is the clearest example, the race laws only needed to be that obsessive because real life had already blurred the line through intermarriage, conversion, and assimilation. The ideology said “fixed and inescapable”; the fact that those laws were necessary at all shows that movement and crossing both had happened and could still happen in the cracks.

So, to answer your chain directly, I agree assimilation was built into many ancient systems. I do not agree that this means identity in antiquity was simply “flexible and conditional” and never operated as inherited and very hard to escape. And I agree Sudan’s categories today are operating with a modern, racialized identity logic inside a colonial state framework. What I don’t grant is the further step you keep trying to smuggle in, that this makes the identity logic behind targeting a group as such something that only really appears in the modern European/colonial moment, as if nothing before it belongs in the same family. The way Sudan is doing this is modern and colonial, yes. That does not mean the underlying move turning who someone is into the reason they can be killed, expelled, or broken as a people suddenly dropped out of the sky in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. That is the part of your chain I don’t buy.

NHC

 

[NoHolyCows]

Where I don’t buy your move is when you treat that colonial package as the moment the logic itself first appears.

Calling my clarification a “move” signals the problem. You are treating an analytic distinction as if it were a rhetorical tactic. I am not making a move. I am not like you, so stop projecting. I am describing the difference between inherited identity that allowed mobility and incorporation in antiquity, and the fixed identity logic that emerges under colonial administration. One is a conceptual distinction. The other is a narrative framing you are trying to impose on my intent. If you stop treating clarification as strategy and look at the content itself, the difference becomes obvious.

Calling it a “move” wasn’t me accusing you of some sneaky trick, it was me pointing to a step in your reasoning. All arguments have moves, including mine. I’m not projecting anything about intent; I’m looking at the structure of what you’ve actually written.

Your own words didn’t just draw a modest analytic distinction between “ancient identity with mobility” and “modern identity tied to state categories.” You went further and said things like “I’m treating fixed identity as something that did not exist before colonial modernity,” that Sudan’s categories operate under a logic “that did not exist in antiquity,” and that ethnic cleansing is “a modern and European thing.” Those aren’t my narrative framings; they’re your formulations. When I say I “don’t buy that move,” I mean I don’t accept that particular step, tying the very existence of fixed, inescapable identity logic to the arrival of colonial administration.

If we strip it back to the content, I have no issue with the basic contrast you’re trying to draw. Ancient empires did build in paths for some people to be absorbed; modern racial states did create much harder, more bureaucratic identity boundaries. That’s a real and useful distinction. Where I part ways is when you turn that into “this fixed identity logic did not exist in antiquity and is a modern and European thing.” At that point you’re not just marking a difference, you’re claiming a historical first for the logic itself. That’s the part I’m rejecting, and I’m rejecting it based on the content of what you wrote, not on any story I’m inventing about your motives.

NHC

 

[NoHolyCows]

Those aren’t “isolated phrases,” they’re the spine of your position. They go beyond “modern systems add a state apparatus” to “this kind of fixed, inescapable identity didn’t exist before colonial modernity and that’s why ethnic cleansing is a modern and European thing.” You can’t now say your “only point” was about the apparatus when you explicitly framed the identity logic itself as something that “did not exist” in earlier periods.

I’ve clarified this multiple times, and you keep ignoring those clarifications so you can nitpick wording instead of addressing the argument itself. At this point it’s obvious you’re hanging onto a loose phrase because you can’t refute the actual distinction. Every time I explain what I meant, you call it “walking it back,” even though I’ve repeated the same clarification over and over.

Jimmy tried pointing this out to you earlier, but you were too busy insisting I must forever stand by the clumsiest version of my wording. I didn’t factor in that you’d latch onto a minor phrasing issue just to dodge the only argument I’m actually making.

I don’t have any problem with clarification. People clean up their wording all the time, that’s normal. What I’m not going to do is pretend this is all about one “loose phrase” when the lines I’m quoting aren’t a single slip, they’re a pattern you leaned on repeatedly.

You didn’t just once say something clumsy and then correct it. You wrote:

“No I’m treating fixed identity as something that did not exist before colonial modernity.”

“the identity categories they are using… operate under a colonial logic that did not exist in antiquity.”

“ethic cleansing is a modern and European thing.”

That’s not me hunting for one bad sentence, that’s you explicitly tying the identity logic itself to a modern European/colonial break and saying it “did not exist” before. When I point out what those lines add up to, that’s not dodging the argument, that is engaging the argument as you actually presented it.

If what you want to stand by now is the narrower version, “modern states racialized identity, built census categories, and enforce boundaries more rigidly than ancient empires”, then fine, that’s a different and much more modest claim, and we agree on most of it. But you can’t rewrite the thread so that the stronger “did not exist in antiquity / modern and European thing” framing was never part of your position and then blame everyone else for taking your own words seriously.

NHC

Sorry to revisit this but I have no choice being that I have a life. Can you point me to the actual posts where I supposedly said those lines? I tried searching them verbatim and nothing comes up. Copying text without linking to the original comment makes it difficult for me to verify what you are quoting. I think it’s fair to reference the specific post, because otherwise it creates a lot of unnecessary extra work on my end.

I’m not inventing those lines, and I’m not paraphrasing them, I’m quoting you back to yourself from this same thread.

You wrote, in one of your replies when we were arguing about ancient vs modern identity:

“No I’m treating fixed identity as something that did not exist before colonial modernity.”

That wasn’t me summarizing you, that was your exact sentence, in your own voice, explaining what you thought I was “not following.”

You also wrote, when you were talking about Sudan and how it fits the pattern you care about:

“The identity categories they are using, and the racial hierarchy they are enforcing, operate under a colonial logic that did not exist in antiquity.”

Again, that is not my wording, it is yours, and you used that “did not exist in antiquity” phrase more than once when you were drawing your sharp line between ancient and modern identity systems.

And you did the little scoreboard earlier in the thread:

“Uppity Negro = 1


Folks who feel personally connected to whiteness and took offence to my pointing out a fact that ethic cleansing is a modern and European thing = 0.”

Those three together are exactly why I said there was a pattern, not a single sloppy sentence. You presented fixed identity as something “that did not exist before colonial modernity.” You said the Sudanese logic “did not exist in antiquity.” You called ethnic cleansing “a modern and European thing.” I’m not asking you to “stand by” them if you now think they were badly phrased, but they’re not made up and they’re not my words.

If your search function isn’t pulling them up verbatim, that’s a technical issue, not proof they were never written. I’m quoting what you actually posted in this same exchange. If you now want to tighten your position to “modern states racialized and bureaucratized identity in a way ancient empires didn’t,” I’ve already said I’m fine with that narrower claim. But you can’t rewrite the thread as if nobody ever saw you go further and then blame everyone else for “misquoting” when they hold you to what you actually typed.

NHC

 

[Gospel]

So you're brushing off my clarifications and calling it tightening.. Cool. Then we’re done here, we’ve hit an impasse.

 

[Gospel]

Those three together are exactly why I said there was a pattern, not a single sloppy sentence. You presented fixed identity as something “that did not exist before colonial modernity.” You said the Sudanese logic “did not exist in antiquity.” You called ethnic cleansing “a modern and European thing.” I’m not asking you to “stand by” them if you now think they were badly phrased, but they’re not made up and they’re not my words.

The “uppity negro” line was snark from my own community, not some coded message in the way you are framing it. If you are unfamiliar with how that language works in my circle, then yes, I can see how you would read a pattern that is not actually there. But that still does not change the fact that you keep ignoring every clarification I have made and keep freezing my position at whatever suits this idea of a "pattern". What is also unfair, specifically, to anyone following the discussion in good faith, is quoting lines without linking the original posts. Without context, it becomes easy to narrow my argument into something I did not write, and that is what comes across as disingenuous.

Since you continue referring to this “pattern,” I need you to clarify what that pattern actually is. You keep invoking it, but you have not explained what it refers to or what you are implying by it. So what exactly do you mean when you call it a "pattern"?

 

[NoHolyCows]

So you're brushing off my clarifications and calling it tightening.. Cool. Then we’re done here, we’ve hit an impasse.

If you want to call it an impasse, that’s fine, but let’s at least be honest about what happened.

You wrote things like “fixed identity did not exist before colonial modernity,” “this logic did not exist in antiquity,” and “ethnic cleansing is a modern and European thing.” When pushed on that, you clarified to a narrower claim about modern racialized, bureaucratic identity, which I’ve said several times I mostly agree with. That isn’t me “brushing off” your clarification, it’s me noticing that what you’re now willing to stand by is smaller than what you originally wrote.

You’re absolutely entitled to tighten your position. I’m equally entitled to notice that it is a tightening, and to say that your original, stronger framing overreached. If your conclusion is “we’re done,” fair enough. Just don’t pretend that walking away magically turns my reading of your earlier words into a misrepresentation.

NHC

 

[Gospel]

So you're brushing off my clarifications and calling it tightening.. Cool. Then we’re done here, we’ve hit an impasse.

If you want to call it an impasse, that’s fine, but let’s at least be honest about what happened.

You wrote things like “fixed identity did not exist before colonial modernity,” “this logic did not exist in antiquity,” and “ethnic cleansing is a modern and European thing.” When pushed on that, you clarified to a narrower claim about modern racialized, bureaucratic identity, which I’ve said several times I mostly agree with. That isn’t me “brushing off” your clarification, it’s me noticing that what you’re now willing to stand by is smaller than what you originally wrote.

You’re absolutely entitled to tighten your position. I’m equally entitled to notice that it is a tightening, and to say that your original, stronger framing overreached. If your conclusion is “we’re done,” fair enough. Just don’t pretend that walking away magically turns my reading of your earlier words into a misrepresentation.

NHC

Appreciate the repetition of “it’s tightening,” if that was supposed to clarify something. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[NoHolyCows]

The “uppity negro” line was snark from my own community, not some coded message in the way you are framing it. If you are unfamiliar with how that language works in my circle, then yes, I can see how you would read a pattern that is not actually there. But that still does not change the fact that you keep ignoring every clarification I have made and keep freezing my position at whatever suits this idea of a "pattern". What is also unfair, specifically, to anyone following the discussion in good faith, is quoting lines without linking the original posts. Without context, it becomes easy to narrow my argument into something I did not write, and that is what comes across as disingenuous.

Since you continue referring to this “pattern,” I need you to clarify what that pattern actually is. You keep invoking it, but you have not explained what it refers to or what you are implying by it. So what exactly do you mean when you call it a "pattern"?

I’m not treating “uppity negro” as a coded message at all. I grew up around that kind of snark, I know exactly how it works. The part I’m pointing to isn’t the in-group joke, it’s the line that comes right after it in that same post:

“Folks who… took offence to my pointing out a fact that ethic cleansing is a modern and European thing = 0.”

That sentence, plus:

“No I’m treating fixed identity as something that did not exist before colonial modernity.”

and:

“The identity categories they are using… operate under a colonial logic that did not exist in antiquity.”

is what I mean by a pattern. Not subtext, not code, not vibes. You repeatedly described the kind of identity logic you care about as something that “did not exist in antiquity,” “did not exist before colonial modernity,” and is “a modern and European thing.” That’s not me narrowing your argument; that’s you tying the very existence of this identity framework to a specific time and place.

I’m not ignoring your clarifications. I’ve acknowledged them several times, you’ve said you mean the modern racialized, bureaucratic form of identity, inside a colonial/post-colonial state. I’ve agreed that is historically specific. Where I’m not budging is on the fact that what you wrote originally went further than that. “Did not exist in antiquity / did not exist before colonial modernity / modern and European thing” are not neutral ways of saying “this version is more developed.” They read as “this kind of fixed, inescapable identity logic originates here.”

So to answer your question directly, when I say “pattern,” I’m talking about that repeated combination:

You describe ethnic cleansing as “a modern and European thing.”

You describe fixed identity as something that “did not exist before colonial modernity.”

You describe Sudan’s identity logic as something that “did not exist in antiquity.”

Taken together, that’s not me freezing you at one sloppy sentence; it’s you consistently locating this identity logic in a modern European/colonial break and talking as if it simply wasn’t there before. When I say I don’t buy that, I’m not erasing your clarifications, I’m saying even the clarified version still tries to turn a real difference in tools and language into a clean historical first for the logic itself.

That’s the disagreement.

NHC

 

[Gospel]

Imma just let the fact you didn't reveal what it's a pattern of cook.