While surveying the Atlantic comments, a revolting tendency to try to build firewall by cultural apology enraged me. This is the sort of dynamic which makes me side-eye identarianism. Slavery in the antebellum USA south and modern Asian homes may not be sociologically identical, but it’s insane to elide the continuity in their oppression.

A mammy is a mammy, in Shanghai or Charlotte.

I’m happy the Atlantic brought this issue out a bit, even despite themselves. #slavery

American slavemasters about their beloved mammies in 1860: “But muh heritage and culture.”
Asian slavemasters about their beloved Lolas in 2017: “But muh heritage and culture.”

No. No thank you.

@Shufei I skimmed it. The ending of that piece is peak neoliberalism, among other things

@shoutcacophony And. How.

I can just see the Atlantic editors, “Oh, what a crowning achievement for a Pulitzer Prize winning writer. Such pathos! Such heroic introspection! I shall tip my kids’ Nicaraguan nanny half a farthing when I return home.”

@Shufei yuuuuup.

@Shufei Later: *forgets the tip, berates nanny instead*

@shoutcacophony Oh, dear. I laugh because I’m tired of crying.

And personally: yes, I’ve known such domestic servants. They were “well treated” and formally contracted by well-meaning cadres who tried to treat them in the spirit that Chairman Mao’s exhortations led them to believe in. But these were poor girls from the country who, no matter how encouraged to education and benefit of opportunity, were terrified they would be sent back in shame.

And when I say girl, I mean girls as young as 14.

So don’t ever pull that “culture” argument on me.