"That's what happens when you interrupt the white man."

[novapsyche]

I don't know why I put myself through it, but it horrifies me to read some of the reader responses to the Kramer/Michael Richards episode.

Michael Richards, you're no Lenny Bruce.

The inner demon behind racist words is not necessarily racism -- I obviously disagree with this article, specifically the penultimate sentence

Michael Richards Should Not Be Forgiven Until He Admits He's A Racist

True penitance is personal and introspective

Comments

[xterminal.livejournal.com]

That many people really liked Seinfeld?

For the love of god, why?

[guttaperk.livejournal.com]

I loved Seinfeld.

"A person who throws the n-word or other racial, ethnic or sex-based epithets is sometimes no more a genuine racist/homophobe/sexist than a person who throws a punch is a genuine boxer.

They may, in some cases, believe the words to be as repellent as they truly are. They simply lack the character and self-control not to use them as weapons.

And that, friends, is a bigger problem than harboring racist sentiments in the darkest corners of your heart."

Exactly what do you disagree with?

[novapsyche.livejournal.com]

A person who throws the n-word or other racial, ethnic or sex-based epithets is sometimes no more a genuine racist/homophobe/sexist than a person who throws a punch is a genuine boxer.

They may, in some cases, believe the words to be as repellent as they truly are. They simply lack the character and self-control not to use them as weapons.

This makes no sense. On its face it makes no sense.

If you are using a racial epithet as a weapon, you are being racist. There is a difference between discussing the historical usages of the word "nigger" (in which case you must use the word in order to examine it) and using it over and over in order to wound or to put someone in his or her place.

Believe me, I'm one of those people who believes that context is everything. The context here, to me, is clear.

Because what else is the author saying? That sometimes, well-respecting people just happen to find racist sentiments coming out of their mouths? Oh, it was just in a moment of rage. Oh, it was just because he was drinking. Oh, he just didn't know any better. He couldn't constrain himself. God knows when I've been drinking or up for 40 hours straight, racist homophobic sexist crap comes out of my mouth and I don't know how it got there. And if it weren't for that provocation ...!

[guttaperk.livejournal.com]

(1) I do think that it is theoretically possible to use racist epithets that one does not in fact agree with, in the same way that one can call someone an "ignorant fuck" while in fact being secretly jealous of their intelligence, or call someone an "ugly bitch" when one in fact is angry at the impotence of one's own secret lust.

(2) I think that this theoretical possibility is likely quite rare. I rather think that people use angry epithets that they secretly identify with to some degree, but that they know are not appropriate in polite society.

(3) Racist beliefs in a general sense are widespread enough that I think we should really get over the idea that racist thoughts make someone inferior. Racist thoughts make someone ordinary; further, pretending that ordinary people don't have racist thoughts just encourages the status quo of utter denial.

(4) I actually think that racism is fundamentally intertwined with the way that the human mind processes information. Racism is, to a certain degree, a part of being human.

(5) The mundanity and omnipresence of racism do not free us from the responsibility of fighting racism-rooted forms of oppression- just as the mundanity and omnipresence of jealousy and white lies don't excuse crimes committed on those foundations.

[novapsyche.livejournal.com]

(4) I actually think that racism is fundamentally intertwined with the way that the human mind processes information. Racism is, to a certain degree, a part of being human.

Then you and I have a fundamentally different view of reality.

I'd really need to quote Howard Zinn at length, but he says in his A People's History of the United States, speaking of racial conditions in the early 1600s,

[E]ven if some blacks might have been considered servants, would blacks be treated the same as white servants?

The evidence, from the court records of colonial Virginia, shows that in 1630 a white man named Hugh Davis was ordered "the be soundly whipt ... for abusing himself ... by defiling his body in lying with a Negro." Ten years later, six servants and "a negro of Mr. Reynolds" started to run away. While the whites received lighter sentences, "Emanuel the Negro to receive thirty stripes and to be burnt in the cheek with the letter R, and to work in shackle one year or more as his master shall see cause."

Although slavery was not yet regularized or legalized in those first years, the lists of servants show blacks listed separately. A law passed in 1639 decreed that "all persons except Negroes" were to get arms and ammunition--probably to fight off Indians. When in 1640 three servants tried to run away, the two whites were punished with a lengthening of their service. But, as the court put it, "the third being a negro named John Punch shall serve his master or his assigns for the time of his natural life." Also in 1640, we have the case of a Negro woman servant who begot a child by Robert Sweat, a white man. The court ruled "that the said negro woman shall be whipt at the whipping post and the said Sweat shall tomorrow in the afternoon do public penance for his offense at James citychurch ...."

This unequal treatment, this developing combination of comtempt and oppression, feeling and action, which we call "racism"--was this the result of a "natural" antipathy of white against black? The question is important, not just as a matter of historical accuracy, but because any emphasis on "natural" racism lightens the responsibility of the social system. If racism can't be shown to be natural, then it is the result of certain conditions, and we are impelled to eliminate those conditions.

"[...] [T]here is evidence that where whites and blacks found themselves with common problems, common work, common enemy in their master, they behaved toward one another as equals. As one scholar of slavery, Kenneth Stampp, has put it, Negro and white servants of the seventeenth century were "remarkably unconcerned about the visible physical differences."

Black and white worked together, fraternized together. The very fact that laws had to be passed after a while to forbid such relations indicates the strength of that tendency. In 1661 a law was passed in Virginia that "in case any English servant shall run away in the company of any Negroes" he would have to give speial service for extra years to the master of the runaway Negro. In 1691, Virginia provided for the banishment of any "white man or woman being free who shall intermarry with a negro, mulatoo, or Indian man or woman bond or free." (pp. 30-31)

[guttaperk.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid that I must say that I agree with Mr. Zinn's passage as quoted above.

Do you feel that it contradicts mine? If so, how?

(reposted to correct a spelling error)

[novapsyche.livejournal.com]

Perhaps I should quote him more.

We see now a complex web of historical threads to ensnare blacks for slavery in America: the desperation of starving settlers, the special helplessness of the displaced African, the powerful incentive of profit for slave trader and planter, the temptation of superior status for poor whites, the elaborate controls against escape and rebellion, the legal and social punishment of black and white collaboration.

The point is that the elements of this web are historical, not "natural." This does not mean that they are easily disentangled, dismantled. It means only that there is a possibility for something else, under historical conditions not yet realized. And one of these conditions would be the elimination of that class exploitation which has made poor whites desperate for small gifts of status, and has prevented that unity of black and white necessary for joint rebellion and reconstruction.

Around 1700, the Virginia House of Burgesses declared:

The Christian Servants in this country for the most part consists of the Worser Sort of the people of Europe. And since ... such numbers of Irish and other Nations have been brought in of which a great many have been soldiers in late warrs that according to our present Circumstances we can hardly governe them and if they were fitted with Armes and had the Opertunity of meeting together by Musters we have just reason to fears they may rise upon us.

It was a kind of class consciousness, a class fear.

According to Zinn, it has been and it continues to be in the interests of certain (not all) monied, land-owning whites to stir up race hatred.

So, no, I don't think you and he agree. Zinn argues that racism is intentionally spread as an idea. It is not natural; it is not indigenous to the human condition.

Re: (reposted to correct a spelling error)

[guttaperk.livejournal.com]

But you're making the same mistake again.

He speaks extensively about the atrocities of American slavery.

Nowhere do I see him making any statement about bigotry in any general sense.

I agree with him that the particulars of American slavery were shaped by cultural or historical forces.

That does not refute- does not even address- the basic human tendency towards stereotypy and illusory pattern perception.

Does that make things more clear?

[novapsyche.livejournal.com]

He speaks extensively about the atrocities of American slavery.

Nowhere do I see him making any statement about bigotry in any general sense.

But he is. He says, "It means only that there is a possibility for something else, under historical conditions not yet realized." What do you think "historical conditions not yet realized" to mean? Personally, I take it to mean that there are ways (yet) to influence society so as to change the culture. He is saying that bigotry is one of those things that can be changed. If it was once deliberately introduced into the cultural system, there can be found a way to deliberately drain it out. And if there can be, he goes on, then it is our imperative as a culture to seek it out.

Racism is taught. It is not an innate thing. Of course humans have it in them the capacity to discriminate. It's how I tell that a pistachio is not a pair of scissors. However, I would have to be specifically taught that somehow my race was either superior or inferior to someone else's.

[guttaperk.livejournal.com]

I take "something else" to mean exactly what it says; something different from the past/current state of affairs in American culture.

I don't take it to mean magic freedom from superficial generalisation.


In general, human behavior is determined by genetic/biological propensity, shaped by sociocultural forces. I believe that racism is no exception.


Jealousy (of one sort or another) is intrinsically human; yet jealousy need not lead to murder. Similarly, bigotry (of one sort or another) is intrinsically human; yet bigotry need not lead to Emmett Till.


I've asked this before, and I'm asking again; are you really asserting that the tendency to attribute stereotyped meaning to superficial characteristics has no basis in human genetic character, and that it is, rather, entirely culturally propagated?

[guttaperk.livejournal.com]

I have to nip off for a bit, so I'll expound slightly- the fact that racism is intrinsic to the human condition does not suggest that atrocities are inevitable.

After all, another aspect of the human condition is the drive and the ability to transcend our lowest common denominators!

It really just means that human beings have the intrinsic tendency to judge and stereotype on the basis of trivial superficialities.

Is this really something that you dispute?