Watershed Moment for Unmasking Racism In America?
Dean
Part of me has been thinking that the furious debates we've seen over the government response to the disaster in the wake of Katrina is a short-term thing, mostly driven by the 24 hour news cycle and the obsessiveness of news junkies. In a week, once the worst of it's over, we'll all look back and marvel at just how much was done in so short a period of time, and will roll our eyes at the finger-pointing partisans who want to blame Democrats or Republicans, or this or that politician, for not getting everything perfect?
But then there came a rant from rap artist Kanye West on national television--during an appeal for donations to the Red Cross!--saying "George Bush doesn't care about black people." West is in effect accusing most of America of racism because the response to this disaster--the biggest and fastest mobilization of anti-disaster forces in American history--wasn't fast enough or perfect enough for him. Furthermore, does West name any of the politicans who share his skin color who have responsibility for this, like the Mayor and City Council of New Orleans? Nope. He just picks the biggest, whitest target he can get: Bush. The one who, Constitutionally, has the least responsibliity here.
Jeff Goldstein says it perfectly: It's about time this crap be confronted head on.
Jeff pussyfoots it a little bit though, by simply calling West's rant "racialist." It's time we face facts: if you're willing to presume bigoted sentiment in a person simply because of his skin color and because you don't agree with his politics, you aren't a "racialist." You are a racist.
Kanye West's a racist. So, for that matter, is that racist twit who goes by the name "Wonkette." So are Oliver Willis, a ton of the people writing for and commenting on Daily Kos, and many of Jeralyn Merrit's commenters. Ditto for the people who try to justify "affirmative action" programs that benefit wealthy and upper middle class black kids (like Harold Ford Junior) at the expense of kids of other races--which would be most of those people I just mentioned.
If you're willing to spread vicious stereotypes because you don't like someone and you think their skin color makes them fair game, you're a racist. If you're willing to subject people to double standards based on their skin color, you're a racist.
Yes, I see some conservatives jumping up and saying, "oh, aren't we all tired of how over-used the accusation of racism is?" Too bad. The reason it's over-used is because we let people get away with these racist double-standards and these bigoted stereotypes.
Related Posts (on one page):
- Barak Obama Doesn't Care About White People
- Modern Racism Unsheeted
- Watershed Moment for Unmasking Racism In America?
Words I never thought I would see written about Jeff Goldstein.
I would suggest that this statement, "oh, aren't we all tired of how over-used the accusation of racism is?" should read,
"Aren't we all tired of how the over-used accusation of racism is used to shut down debate."
At least in my opinion. I enjoy calling pro-affirmative-action people racists. I do it all the time.
"What kind of racist are you for thinking that certain minorities aren't intelligent enough to compete with other minorities and whites?" I don't think shouting "Racist" is a trump card and I welcome debate on the point.
But then, I'm kind of an A-hole.
We thought the Left wanted to eliminate racism. Instead they've institutionalized it within themselves.
What we really need is to stop classifying people by the color of their skin. No more Congressional Black Caucus, no NAACP, etc. The KKK is a pariah organization for good reason. Those same reasons apply to all other racist organizations. Can you imagine a CWC or an NAAWP?
MLK's noble dream was that his children would be judged by the content of their character, not that the nation would fret endlessly over the color of their skin. We seem to be farther from that ideal than ever, and these organizations have made it their mission to ensure that it never happens.
Crooks and Liars ran a post, linked by The Moderate Voice, where Geraldo and someone called Shepard Smith I believe describe people being denied freedom of movement. Moreover, apparently while aid has arrived, the aid is not reaching many people who need it, and there are allegations of FEMA not knowing where people are located. The New York Times describes buses that were to evacuate the Superdome mysteriously stopping and the remainder of people there having to wait until at least Sunday. Apparently the place is now effectively an open sewer and garbage dump.
So it sounds like the most pressing issue right now is communication (there is some military name like C3 for this sort of thing).
Accusations of racism and blame presumably are a second order effect?
It turns out that the majority of the people suffering are black. And I have no doubt that the majority of these type of sick commenters are white.
I don't mean that in a facile way; the poverty in New Orleans was and is awful, but I think the problems that caused it are cultural, social, governmental, and economic, and have no simple cure.
Making the argument about race, however, avoids this deeper truth. I think Kanye's comments are needlessly inflammatory, but I also think calling him a racist in return compounds the problem. It is poverty that needs to be tackled at this point, not race.
Culture creates character. Poor character leads to poverty. As Bill Cosby noted, if you don't value speaking proper English, hard work, honesty, and education, you won't succeed. Those aren't racial value, they're cultural values.
I agree with you that culture is important, and that it is very relevant to any discussion of poverty. And I probably could have made that clearer in my first post. I also do not believe that culture is the sole cause of black poverty, nor do I think that culture can be "fixed" without looking at poverty from other perspectives.
However, I do believe that when it comes to self-identity, people's notions of race remain very mixed up with our notions of culture. Blacks have their own culture; as Dean has often noted, they even have their own language. The fact that their culture is often (not always) highlighted by skin color makes it very difficult to extricate the two. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try, but it requires sensitivity and awareness.
Which is to say, when many black people talk about being black, they are not just referring to their skin color. One of my wisest friends at work is a black man with very light skin; he is also a forceful and persuasive thinker about black (and brown) culture. It is clear from what he says that being black for him is not a matter of biological race; it is a matter of class, culture, and ancestry. I often disagree with him, but he is nonetheless one of the most insightful people I know.
I'm not saying that "your race is your culture" - I don't believe in "race" as a biological phenomenon. However, I do think that the perception of race remains very important to people's sense of self, and is not as easily unbound from culture as you seem to think. Because of that, race and poverty do continue to be intertwined.
I think you're being a bit harsh lumping Harold Ford Jr. with this group, though. There's a significant distinction to be made between "wrong on the issue" and "thoroughly unbalanced on the issue." Ford's a member of the CBC, but he doesn't seem to partake in the more vicious rhetoric associated with the group--that suggests to me that he's reachable. Of course, I could be wrong and future events might convince me so.
To say the least, that seemed to me like bad science - i.e. we reject all these other explanations and therefore the only explanation must be my pet theory. I emailed Dr. Sowell to try to get some explanation of exactly what he meant by culture, and how he could define it and measure it as a predictive variable but couldn't get much clarification.
I also read the sections in Freakonomics about the values and behavior of families, the performance of public versus private schools, the most startling and counterintuitive highlights of which were that it didn't matter if you actually went to a magnet or private school, but it mattered if you applied, and that it didn't matter if you read to your children but it mattered if you had a lot of books in your house.
So while I am sympathetic to Mr. Cosby's views, and they seem self-evidently true, I'm not sure they have been demonstrated in a scientifically valid way.
All: what is the difference between a racialist, and a racist? I first heard "racialist" used by somebody like David Duke. It reminds me of the comments of newscasters covering Somalia in 1993. Somebody commenting on intertribal prejudices said "Well it's not racism - it's just a traditional Somalian ethnocentrism". It sent me scrambling for the dictionary.
I agree with you Dean. You can't fling the work "racist" about without proof. And since Kanye said what he said without proof, back to him. Fair enough, my friend.
But I will not sit by and let anyone just fling the "black culture is poverty" argument. There are way too many productive blacks in America who ascribe to "black culture" to let that fly.
I agree that process of elimination would be a very poor basis on which to conclude culture is the issue. But there's a mountain of empirical data to support that viewpoint, and your points from Freakonomics tend to support it as well. Having lots of books in your home and valuing quality education are certainly a cultural value.
Of course, it is difficult to prove a social theory scientifically. To do so, you would need to create a testable experiment in which you took people and controlled for all other factors besides culture while creating a cultural difference between them, then see how their lives turned out. Ethically, such an experiment would be impermissible, but describing it is perhaps useful in that it makes us think about what results we would get.
Like global warming, this is a theory that can only be indirectly tested. But I have seen quite a few studies that seem to indicate pretty conculsively cultural factors are far more determinant than race.
Culture. And bad luck. RACE IS NOT CULTURE. You may be able to talk with them! Good for you. The real issue is that much of the time I'd bet good money that you don't behave like them and your parents didn't either. The problem is that all too often the culture of the black underclass is labeled as the only authentic black culture, not the culture of the black middle class. This is exactly the issue that Cosby discussed. Most people wouldn't label the culture of poor white people as authentic white culture. They'd label it dysfunctional and a function of poverty, not something to glamorize and emulate, something to be changed and done away with. This difference in attitude makes all the difference in the world.
Tyrone: Indeed. Another counterexample is the language of the people in Liar's Poker who use what Dr. Sowell describes as "swaggering oratary" - they're certainly not poor but they certainly have a bragging, profane language style.
Lindsey: I enjoyed "Knowledge and Decisions" many years ago. I believe Dr. Sowell's article was a brief synopsis of the book you mention, but he did not cite peer-reviewed publications when I emailed him, so I'm not sure how he comes to his conclusions. The problem I have with someone like Dr. Sowell or Paul Krugman is that they can make unbelievably lucid arguments which are completely unsupported by data.
You assert that "the difference in attitude is all the difference in the world" - but exactly what does that mean, and has it been tested?
I also emailed Roland Fryer, who Steven Levitt mentioned, but also did not hear back from him.
If anyone has some good citations I am still curious.
I think it's fair if someone wants to say there are elements within black culture which are dysfunctional and need addressing and that a lot of that is stuff black folks need to do for themselves as a community. On the flip side, one thing I've noticed is that white people don't even want to see their own poor folk, and treat them with utter contempt and loathing when they do discuss them at all. In other words, they're way more in denial about the problem in their own house than black people are.
A majority of people living on welfare are white. A majority of the functionally illiterate are white. That's the truth. Most people don't want to hear that, but it's still true.
I root for hurricanes. When, courtesy of the Weather Channel, I see one forming in the ocean off the coast of Africa, I find myself longing for it to become big and strong--Mother Nature's fist of fury, Gaia's stern rebuke. Considering the havoc mankind has wreaked upon nature with deforesting, stripmining, and the destruction of animal habitat, it only seems fair that nature get some of its own back and teach us that there are forces greater than our own.
The pure idiocy of this essay is only surpassed by his recent attempts to delete it. A few days ago, as the damage from Hurricane Katrina became evident, weasel Wolcott said:
I've removed my earlier post about hurricanes ("An Ignoble Confession"); it was written in a frivolous vacation mood, and this is not the time for frivolity.
But he proved that he's also an idiot where computers are concerned, because the "I root for Hurricanes" essay is still in his archives.
I can't help but notice that most academic and intellectual idiots of Walcott's ilk are white, including faux Indian Ward Churchill. Most idiotarians of every sort are white. I don't know if it's racist to point this out, but there does seem to be some cultural influence involved.
Still, the whole, "I'll make myself look good by bashing people who look like me" schtick got old a long time ago. A few jokes here and there are one thing, but when you make it a habit it gets way old. It's sort of like certain black comedians whose whole gig is making fun of black people. It gets old, fast.
It's time more people noticed and spoke up.
There is a theory that more geniuses and more pschyopaths are white as well. This is similiar to the male vs. female breakdown with males having more outliers.
It may be a cultural effect with white culture supporting individuation more which like almost everythign has its good and bad points.
I'm not sure your description of not wanting to see is correct, Dean, but something is going on. And if anyone has a clue how to help poor whites out; I live in a county with 12% unemployment, and probably upwards 90% white, I'd be glad to hear it.
We have it better, I think than most here, but even ours is hard. I don't know how people who make much less make it.
And the biggest local thing the gov't has done? Ran a divided four lane highway to a town of five thousand people, and taken more than fifteen years doing it. Combining statism with lack of imagination with general incompetence is what I sometimes suspect.
I don't know what to do to help the locals, who I admire a great deal. I'd like to tell them how to run a free-market social conservative utopia, but I'm not sure how.
If I recall correctly, roughly one-eighth the populace is black. As a good first approximation, then, I expect roughly one-eighth of any particular group to be black. When I see numbers that veer significantly from that -- say, more than 20% or less than 8% -- then I start suspecting racial or cultural trends. A real statistician could make a better judgement, but those guidelines are good for a rule of thumb.
Day after day it becomes crystalline clear to me (being an individual on the fringe of not caring about politics) that the agenda of politicos discussing entertainers (and their opionated viewpoints) always changes depending on what side they're for, or what their sentiments represent. When it's against something they're for (the politicos) are for it's always "entertainers should keep their big mouths shut", but when it's echoing or agreeing with them (those naughty lil politicos again) it's all cheerleaders and fanfares. But I digress.
Still, troubled by all of this I am.
Well, the point was that a few random idiots don't really say very much about any group as a whole. And I can never pass up an opportunity to criticize Wolcott.
In any case, this biased, pro-Jesse Jackson writer from the very anti-American Guardian had one interesting comment:
Louisiana has a large poor white population, but where have they gone? Where are the white people? New Orleans sits in a basin and hasn't the same pattern of suburbs as other US cities, but it does have them. Ninety percent of the houses in the town of Slidell, just over the bridge across Lake Pontchartrain, have been ruined. The west-lying towns, on higher ground, all have a river side, their backs to the levee. Where are those residents? They got out.
Why did the poor whites get out before the flood while the poor blacks stayed? It's not clear from the article and I really don't know why, but it would be good to find out.
Right, but your assuming having lots of books is not part of someone's culture. I would vehemently disagree with that assumption.
I guess it depends to some extent how you define "culture." I'm speaking in terms of any general set of habits and principles passed on from one generation to to the next, not the usual ethnocentric meaning of "culture."
I can play this game, too! Does calling Dean racist for his single sentiment make you a racist? I guess then, almost like math induction, everyone is a racist.
I don't buy it. If we saw a guy in a sheet burning a cross, would you insist we know who he is, have an inkling of knowledge of his background, and know his momma? Or can we just make the logical assumption that he's a racist?
While Kanye West's statements aren't as offensive as a cross burning, they are just as clearly divisive and racist.
You don't like a man, fine, but you accuse him of something like racism you'd better be able to back it up with something more solid than anything we've seen in the last week. And you don't hold white people to double standards either.
Eric: The solution for poor whites is pretty much the same as the solution for poor anybody--a) education, and b) a work ethic. A can be provided, B has to be encouraged.
Oh yeah, there's also C--encouraging people to relocate to where jobs are, and possibly helping them to do that.
Mary: Yes, there's relatively little look at all the poor whites who got creamed. My own view is that for a complicated mix of reasons the press prefers to show the poor black folks in New Orleans. It's not because of bigotry on their part, it's just that it's EASIER to find the people in the city than out in the boonies, and it sort of plays into everyone's assumptions.
I'm not sure that all the poor white folks got away, but I'm sure many did simply because living in the country you have to have some sort of transportation. You can live in a big city and be poor but dependent on buses and trains and such, and you tend to live closer to things so you can walk to stores and such. In the country, you pretty much have to have a vehicle--usually beat up old pickups and jalopies is what poor white trash drive.
I'm quite sure though that some of them didn't get out. They just stubbornly and stupidly stayed put and got blown away.
For those of you interested, I've dicussed the social construct theory of race at some length in a past post here.
"Racist!" is what we call a person who says: "Let's kill all the niggers!"
"Racislist" (or "racially-conscious") is what such a person calls himself when he says: "The Negroid or Hamitoidal race has been scientifically proved to be genetically undesirable, and therefore we find that it would be most expedient for the greater societal good if that race were to be eugenically eliminated from the gene pool of the species homo sapiens."
Or were you just looking for a context to use "niggers" without drawing attention too much negative attention to yourself?