I really can’t say it any better than Portly Dyke over at Shakesville, so please go read her essay about how the desire to will away public expressions of racism, sexism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, and homophobia, paired with desensitization have brought us to where we are today.
It’s not that all expressions of racism are equivalent — they range from ignorant miscues to out-and-out egregious exposure of personal animus toward a group of minorities, from Andrew Cuomo’s use of “shuck and jive” (along with his sad excuses for using it), to Imus and “nappy headed ho’s”, to Dog the Bounty Hunter (”I’m not going to take a chance ever in life for losing everything I’ve worked for for 30 years because some f**king n**er heard us say n***er and turned us into the Enquirer magazine“). These didn’t happen in a vacuum.
But as a society, even well-meaning progressives are finding ways to excuse statements that would have never flown a couple of decades ago. I had a similar reaction to Portly Dyke when she started hearing this excuse…PD:
I entered a conversation about whether a white news commentator might not have known that suggesting that other golfers “lynch him (Tiger Woods) in a back alley” was a racist comment worthy of public sanction.Go read the rest — particularly the back and forth in the comments. She also included this Brave New Films video I’ve featured before, with incredible racist statements from talking heads at Faux News. No one in these segments was fired or reprimanded for saying nasty and outrageous racist statements things on the air. I’m also sure none of these people in this video — including Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, a favorite black pundit brought on to say the most vile things — consider themselves to be racist. The edges are so filed down on the “benign” aspects of racism that the label is reserved only for extreme violence against a POC, or extreme cases of institutionalized bigotry that cannot be ignored.Among the various arguments I read was this one: Given the commentator’s age, she might not really understand the charged context of the word “lynch” in reference to a person-of-color.
And somehow, vaguely, in the back of my mind, I remembered a time when I could not imagine that I would be hearing this argument from progressives.
…I could remember that, in the 80’s, even though there were still many, many confrontations with the MSM and mainstream culture, and much consciousness-raising yet to be done, I didn’t think I would have been having this very basic argument about using the word “lynch” (or arguing about whether rape was “gray”, or “gag gifts” featuring detached female body parts were “just a joke” rather than sexist) — with progressives.
…My problem with filing off the edges of our outrage at such racist words and actions is just that — it’s filing off — it’s erosive — and the problem with erosion is that if you let it go on long enough, you’ll eventually wind up with nothing at all.
Also:
* The simplicity and beauty of Dog the Bounty Hunter’s racist tirade
55 Responses to “Filing the edges off of racism”
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The problem is, that as an Older Person, I am continually shocked at how little younger persons know. They are particularly ignorant of history. I fear that they are going to know less and less as time goes on, and because different segments of the population will know a different few things, polarization and inadvertently offensive language will continue to increase.
That said, there’s just no way that Imus or Dog didn’t intend to be offensive.
Mrs Nice Guy
thank you, thank you, for pointing me to that. this confirms a suspicion i’ve had after some truly fucked-up conversations with people a bit younger than me, and i’ve called out some of them for doing, or laughing at, unforgivably racist bullshit. and they never take me seriously. they don’t even seem to understand. people my age, and even a bit older, do. people even a year or two younger often don’t. (some do. and some who don’t are better able to understand after a conversation. the youngest members don’t seem to get it at all.)
there is, i think, a generational divide, and i think PD is totally right about what caused it. those on the younger side of it simply do not understand the media culture they’ve grown up in and have not been given the tools to analyse it. even when you point it out to them, they frequently just do not (will not?) get it. it’s
but thank you.
It’s not the ones who don’t know particular bits of history but the ones who claim to be liberal hipsters who indulge in it because they’re “not PC” who are the problem and the expression of the ongoing mess that Portly Dyke describes (tho’ speaking as someone who remembers if only a little the ’70s, all the “backlash” against anti-racist and anti-sexist attitudes was there from the start, it just didn’t get media-mainstreamed until the ’80s with Limbutt) - and after the Jena 6, who can with a straight face argue that today’s teens don’t know what “lynch” means? Let alone someone of adult years who works in the media…
(see also the Abercrombie & Finch Orientalist t-shirt situation of a couple years ago - you just *know* that these innocence-declarers are the same one who think it’s funny as hell to pull their eyelids and stick their front teeth out and say “flied lice” to their friends for shits ‘n’ giggles…)
Pam, I think you were a little harsh on the “maybe the commentator doesn’t know history” explanation. I bet there are a heck of a lot of young ‘uns who DON’T know the history of what actually happened. This is particularly true if you realize that a) in a lot of cases, American History gets taught in the senior year of high school, and b) they invariably get the schedule wrong so after leisurely going through the whole 1776 stuff and up to the Civil War, the teacher suddenly realizes he/she has to cram the next hundred years of history in two weeks before the end of the term and invariably drops stuff out. The whole Civil Rights movement probably gets blown off in ten minutes–INCLUDING Rosa Parks and the assassination of MLK.
It’s sad to say, but the history of how people of color were treated in this country–after you get past the Civil War–is considered “specialist history.”
Add to that the “acceptable racist bullshit” that flies around on the internets and in the media, and yeah, we got problems.
“The problem is, that as an Older Person, I am continually shocked at how little younger persons know. They are particularly ignorant of history. I fear that they are going to know less and less as time goes on”
and that’s why “Idiocracy” was so uncomfortable to sit through. this is fast becoming a nation of morons.
On the other hand, I’ve experienced the opposite. Not that it isn’t true that young people are ignorant of the context of racism, but the worst example I have is my step father. Because he’s older, he has this mindset that if it was okay back when he was young it should be okay now. There was nothing wrong with Little Black Sambo! it’s just a harmless kids book. That kind of thing.
http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:KUB-07p4BIMJ:www.cnn.com/US/9704/21/fuzzy/+tiger.woods+fuzzy&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us
Anyone else remember Fuzzy Zoeller vs. Tiger?
Great post; PortlyDyke nailed this one.
In addition to what PD cited, I think late 80s/90s politics also came heavily into play- the “kinder, gentler” Bush Sr years, then the politically correct Clinton era. It seemed to be an overload of battling for “decency and morality” by both sides, as DEFINED by both sides. No middle ground whatsoever- “you’re either for us or against us” mentality.
What started as fairly innocuous (bordering on silly, frankly) has escalated into a full-out assault. America is now remarkably devisive, polarized, and poised to become an out-and-out patriarchal theocracy. And if that happens, there will be even more open racism and sexism than there is now. Please, someone tell me I have my head up my ass on this… I need some hope for America.
Are people excusing them or just genuinely ignorant of the background of a lot of these terms? My guess would be the latter. Do we need a “Sensitivity 101″ class in high schools now so that none of this stuff slips by us?
http://raw360.com/item/1933
After reading PortlyDyke’s essay, I Googled one phrase that she used- cakewalk. Had no idea what she was talking about…
When I was 5, my elementary school held a fair to raise money and in one room was a “cakewalk”- a path of 8x11 papers on the floor that you walked on with music playing. Kinda a version of “musical chairs”, I guess, Then randomly the record was stopped, you stayed on whatever numbered paper you were on, and the teacher drew a number from a hat. If someone was on that square, they won the cake; if no one was, the game continued. So the “no talent, luck or chance” definition quoted in my link was what I always thought a cakewalk was.
Yes! I’m glad somebody else knew the meaning I grew up with. Louise’s “cakewalk” is the same as the one I grew up with. No clue about the other meaning until PD’s post at Shakesville, and, frankly, I’m kinda pissed off that this new knowledge kind of taints what was otherwise a pleasant and benign memory. I’d think, given that words and phrases change meaning all the time anyway, that we would prefer them to take less harmful and damaging meanings. I mean, I do see the point of remembering what was done, but, you know, according to Wikipedia, “takes the cake” comes from the same type of event.
There’s also an (incorrect) folk etymology assigning racist meaning to the word “picnic,” which has ruined that word for me now too, because whenever somebody uses it I now have to wonder whether they’re pointedly using it with the (false) knowledge that it originally had a racist connection, or whether “picnic” just comes to their mind more readily than “outing” or whatever.
I’m not sure I’m willing to go down the road of learning every word and phrase that has connections to any bad thing any group ever did to any other group. I mean, people have to learn math at some point, no? I should think it would be enough to know the broad strokes. Which, granted, opens up a whole can of worms about what parts are important enough to be included in “the broad strokes.” But damn, people.
bluebonnet,
I *just* watched idiocracy–it had flown under my radar when it came out and I picked it up by accident. You couldn’t be more right–that movie is prescient.
I want to point out something that is very uncomfortable for people on all sides of the argument to grasp–this is not only a question of youth vs age or what were salient political and cultural realities when we were old enough (or young enough) to be paying attention. This is,and always has been, a country of immigrants. Rapid immigration and assimilation has occured in pockets and with huge gaps all over the country. What is “obviously” part of X’s history is totally peripheral to Y’s history. The Irish famine? why its bad to call priests “mackerel snappers?” totally irrelevant outside areas of high irish settlement. The meaning of the word “Pogrom”? not clear anywhere that ashkenazic jews didn’t settle.
Words drift in their meanings and become unmoored from their history. Years ago my mother was on the phone with a well known activist minister–couldn’t have come from a more blue blooded wasp background–and he said to her “I’ve got the whole schmear right here” meaning he had some information for her. He had been hanging with leftist new york jews so long he’d adopted their yiddishisms. Was it anti semitic? no. Was he aware of it? maybe.But I can guarantee lots of people aren’t aware of the history of the words they use. There’s huge linguistic drift and there is rapid movement of words from outside the white mainstream into it–look at words and musical forms like “jazz” for goodness’ sake.
Can we try to save our anger and our focus for working on really offensive forms of cultural forgetting (I’d put forgetting what lynching means right at the top) and really offensive forms of cultural appropriation and narcissim (when an upper class, or white, or male, or straight person adopts the language and vocabulary of an oppressed group in order to defuse or disarm conflict. I’d put white guys talking fake black talk in that category). But there’s so much more to be fighting about. The context in which some of this angst has come up–specifically the “shuck and jive” phrase from andrew cuomo–strikes me as silly. There’s racism and there’s racism but “shuck and jive” has long since passed into the lexicon of ordinary ways of describing a non racial activity (fooling people.) Just as yiddish words like trafe, goniff, meshugenah, chatchke, etc…have passed into the language.
aimai
But it leads ME to wonder; did my teacher who set UP the cakewalk know the racism involved with the phrase? Did the school system? I mean, this was 1970 in rural Maine.
A stupid and off-topic example: Bazooka gum. I chewed it as a kid, back before BubbleYum etc. Never KNEW what the hell a “bazooka” was until I was an adult!
My point is that over the course of time, the meaning of words gets lost in the fray. Sometimes it’s no big deal, but in matters of racism etc, it IS a big deal. Maybe we SHOULD be made more aware what words or phrases are starting to lose the painful edge and are being filed down by time and casual use- Pam’s point in the first place.
Very well done, Pam- I get it even more now.
This argument would be better coming from someone other than “Portly Dyke.” That seems like a pretty good example of filing down the edges and desensitization. Most of what she wrote applies to her own name. It’s like Jonah Goldberg complaining that people use the term “fascist” too much then writing an entire book calling people fascists.
The meaning of words does change over time. Now “lynch” has not changed nearly enough to excuse what that golf anchor said, it was obviously very stupid and insensitive, but I *really* find it hard to be upset when the subject (Tiger Woods) isn’t upset at all.
It smacks of mock outrage.
The wondering about whether the people who set up my “cakewalk” meant it in a sly racist way (this would have been ca. 1980 in very rural Iowa) is why the memory is tainted for me.
Why is it so self-evidently a good thing to preserve the sting in certain words? I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m not going to use the word anymore, in any sense: it wasn’t a big part of my vocabulary anyway. (I also, FWIW, have a hard time buying that someone might not understand the meaning behind “lynch.” And it’s not hard to imagine that some of the Bush Administration’s phrasings — “tar baby” and the like — might be deliberate in some way or another. But a dog whistle that fewer and fewer people hear eventually ceases to be an effective dog whistle, right?)
But why do we want kids growing up in a world where these terms still have this kind of power? What world are we actually working toward, then?
White culture has always appropriated words from oppressed groups, its part of their privilege. Its also part of white privilege to appropriate such words without recognition of the meaning of such, or with deliberate intention of discounting the oppression associated with such; its part of the denial of oppression that makes being a part of the oppressor group that much easier to take.
All the same, I imagine that many terms such as “cake walk” lose their context when the original activities surrounding such cease to take place and the entire story behind the terminology dies a slow death. It does not mean that the oppression itself has died a slow death, it just means the oppression has taken on new forms or the activity a new descriptor.
Ignorance of history is indeed paramount to oppression. As long as people misunderstand or do not even know of their history, then mythology and lies can be placed to fill the gaps.
This of course, is what some in the MSM, offshoot media and others who wish for a return to the old oppressions intend.
A denial of the presence of existance of racism, classism or sexism accepted as mainstream thought allows for the denial of social justice and reform, which would mean most definitely a loss of privilege for the privileged classes.
So far the right wing, since Reagan, has been successful in wiping out gradually collective memory of the serious injustices of the past, which also help to deny the existence of injustice today.
It has worked. Welfare “Reform”, now immigration “reform”, dismantling of affirmative action and hiring quotas, dismantling of disadvantaged business program fundings, the defunding of the Labor Board and the EEOC and the wiping out of large parts of history, begging to be told, in the interest of getting back to the old ways of doing things. Dismantling of unions’ rights to strike, movement of jobs overseas that employed great numbers of immigrants of all colors and stripes who otherwise would not have enjoyed a decent standard of living.
Today its euphemistically called “globalism”. I’d prefer to call it shifting — shifting from an area where people have fought for the right decent pay and decent benefits to a new group that can be exploited. East St. Louis is another example of shifting that took place in the early part of the 20th century.
I agree Louise, we’re heading straight for a fascist/theocracy, the seeds have been planted. How many of us will know where the dividing line is, have we crossed in already? Are we at the point of no return until serious oppression and rebellion?
Oh and aimi, you’re the first person I’ve known since I left home to know of the “mackeral snappers” insult, a favorite of my Irish protestant father, an old bigot in the Archie Bunker style with an Ivy League education fit to know far better.
Oh and one example I’d like to share and get off my mind. When researching toxic waste pollution in E. St. Louis, which is a real problem, I came across a study done by Washington University students. They mocked the activism of the mostly black activists and residents there by calling their rebuttal study the “Banana Study” or something along that line.
I was absolutely appalled and I wrote off a letter that I’m sure was ignored.
When a so-called “respected institution” such as Washington University in St. Louis can get away with such overt racism, where’s the limit?
I think it’s a strange problem that as we get further away from the really racist past and younger people start to not associate, say, lynching and nooses with anything racial, the potential for more inadvertent offence arises.
It seems sad that new generations have to be constantly reminded of the connotations of certain things and I’m sure everyone would rather they be forgotten.. but that’s not really an option at the moment. People should know their history and learn what might cause offence.
The Tiger Woods / lynching thing is probably an innocent mistake, but watching the Fox compilation, you know they’re quite well aware of the connotations of the terms they use. I wish they’d just come out and use the words they know they want to.
I didn’t know that about cakewalk either. I’d always thought of the walking around in a circle and winning a cake (which is what we used to do at fund raisers as well, in rural southern WV). However, given that the organizers of said activities were generally close family members of mine (mom and aunts), I can say pretty definitely that they also didn’t know that meaning of the word either. Not that that makes it any better, but I do wish it didn’t have that connotation.
That’s pretty much exactly what happens. Here, the kids get two years of social studies required and then they can take electives if they want. The requirements are one year of “world” (read European) history and one year of American history. Which almost always glosses over anything even remotely bad that we ever did and they never get past reconstruction, if they even get that far.
I just had that conversation with my mom this afternoon. I was talking about how the old cartoons (Warner Bros from the 40s, a lot of the older Disney stuff–things that I grew up with and loved as a kid) are way more blatantly racist than I remember and how now I probably won’t let my kids watch them until they are much older and we can have a conversation about it that they will understand. And then she started complaining about how everybody is so PC and sensitive these days and that she wishes everyone would just lighten up. Because she’s always had to deal with inbred hillbilly jokes (again, we’re from southern WV) and how she can laugh it off and not be offended, so why can’t they. I can’t believe I had to explain the difference to her. I could sort of understand this coming from my granddad–he grew up in the depression and WWII in that area and didn’t really know better, but my mom is only 51 and she definitely knows better. Especially considering that the majority of her grandchildren (4 of 6, including my two) aren’t white and will have to deal with this shit. They shouldn’t have to deal with it from their own grandmother.
PD is not saying that by being unaware of the history of “cake walk” one IS racist.
What she is saying, and I agree, is that the elites are actively trying to normalize bigotry.
They simultaneously mock anti-racist & feminist activism - insisting that we are creating our own problems to fight against (since racism and sexism are obviously things of the past).
This gives people a pass to do racist and/or sexist things and excusing it all by claiming it’s a joke or not even race/sex related at all.
Frat boys throw blackface parties and claim it has nothing to do with race. Men tell rape “jokes” or harass women in public and tell the offended parties they are overreacting. It effectively silences those groups on the receiving end of bigotry. “I’m not PC!” is seen as a legitimate rebuttal (i.e. “I don’t have any consideration for people who aren’t exactly like me”).
And the problem is that even “progressive” people go out of their way to excuse such behavior - like they don’t want to rock the boat so they pretend it’s not racist and/or sexist.
It boggles. White people and male people need to recognize their privilege, first and foremost. And personally, I see/hear a lot of those people denying they have privilege and even insisting that it’s minorities and women who have privilege in America in 2008. So *of course* they think they’re entitled to be disgustingly offensive - it’s only minorities and women they’re attacking! But don’t forget; they’re not being bigoted.
It all leaves me exasperated.
Margalis, just because Tiger didn’t call this woman out (and didn’t Fuzzy Zoeller a decade ago, either) doesn’t mean that this is “mock outrage”. It just means that Tiger doesn’t want to make this an issue, Certainly that is his choice and is his pattern; I believe him to be a nice man.
That said… the anchor has no defense. Not with Jena 6. None whatsoever. As PD said, Howard Cossell and Jimmy the Greek were removed for similar offenses- this woman is getting away with a 2 week suspension because 1- she IS a woman, and 2- there are the examples of Imus, Dawg, Limbaugh, etc.
Ick. That Limbaugh is even on my screen- gotta bleach my computer and my eyes.
100% agreement, Sarah MC- it’s one thing to simply not KNOW something and another to know and play the excuse or joke card.
That’s why I did the Google search. Because until I know, I don’t KNOW…
Ya know?
Too tired. Giants won and I’m a happy kid. G’night all!
Margalis, consider what would happen to Tiger’s image if he did express outrage over the anchor’s comments.
Racism comes in many forms - not just the use of racial slurs.
It’s also the way whites “allow” black people to express themselves.
Tiger has to say the comments weren’t offensive no matter what. If they did offend him, and he said so, he’d go from being a “nice black man” to an “angry black man.” Even if he expressed outrage, the MSM and the public would suddenly start seeing him as an angry black man who’s easily offended and can’t take a joke. Probably hates white people too. :rolls eyes:
It’s all about the normalization of racism.
Margalis, consider what would happen to Tiger’s image if he did express outrage over the anchor’s comments.
Good grief, yes. He wouldn’t even be able to squint into the sun without someone yelling, “Angry! Angry!”
For some reason this made me recall something I read decades ago. DeForest Kelley said in an interview that as a southerner he was used to kidding around with black people and that he would say things like, “last one in is a nigger baby” to Nichelle Nichols and “she just loved it!” I bet she did. I can just imagine her tight-lipped smiles. If she had said a single word she would have been fired. I don’t Kelley realized that - he didn’t have to.
Sniper: It can be seen with sexism a bit too.
So many guys will say, “I asked my girlfriend/wife/sister/cousin if SHE was offended by X, and she’s not. So it’s not sexist.”
Now, this plays out with racism differently than with sexism. But still, little girls learn pretty early on that standing up against sexism will get them a reputation for being a “feminazi bitch.” So they avoid it, and eventually they can’t even identify sexism because they’ve been so conditioned to accept it or even applaud it.
The original “cakewalk” was an event held at dances in the black community. Couples would show off their stylish walks and their stylish dance steps walking around a square or round track, and the best one would win a cake. The minstrel version and the kids version are both derived from this original form. As with so many kids’ events, the adults associated with it wanted to take skill out of process, at least partly (I think) so they could include kids of various ages.
See, I’m a *lot* Older, that’s why I remember this stuff.
Mrs Nice Guy
I don’t place much stock in hanging people for singular comments no matter how vile, especially people who are speaking extemporaneously. I tend to think that people who are truly vile establish patterns of behavior. I can understand how someone mentally put hanging and black person together and came out with “lynch” especially in the context of on-the-spot verbal communication.
The idea that someone should lose their job for a single word that didn’t offend the subject is far too close to speech policing for my liking. Jimmy the Greek didn’t just use a single poorly-chosen word, he revealed deep racist sentiment. This person did not do that.
The idea that you can divine someone’s intent and character from ONE word is one I completely reject. Nobody can withstand that kind of scrutiny. This is the sort of thinking that lead Amanda to lose her job as Edward’s blogger.
Is this part of a pattern of behavior? If so then yes, the woman probably deserves to lose her job. Is it an out-of-character singular comment that appears to be a moment of stupidity? If so a suspension seems appropriate.
In many of these cases the people who are the most vocal are also the least informed, which is a huge red flag.
Donovan McNabb expressed outrage over racial comments about him and he didn’t get the sort of reaction you are predicting. He was not viewed as an easily offended and angry black man at all, in fact his reputation remains that he is too docile and a bit of an “Uncle Tom.”
It’s not a prediction; it’s observation. I am not familiar with the McNabb situation. But the reality is that black men must come across as incredibly unthreatening in order to be accepted by mainstream America.
Have you noticed how often Obama has been described as “appealing to white voters?” That’s because MOST black men aren’t!
Have you noticed how often Obama has been described as “appealing to white voters?” That’s because MOST black men aren’t!
Shit, Shelby Steele was on Bill Moyers talking about that.
So I just did a Google search to see if I could find any info on McNabb + racism.
And I found a bunch of football websites/message boards/communities full of white people claiming, among other things:
- White people’s brains and black people’s brains are wired differently. McNabb is an exception to the rule (that black people don’t think methodically!), which is why most QBs, coaches and owners are white. That’s why he’s more scrutinized than his white counterparts.
- McNabb has a chip on his shoulder and that’s it.
Perhaps McNabb is viewed favorably because he plays football, a sport in which black players are the norm. Golf is a predominatly white game, so Tiger has to watch himself more than McNabb does.
Plus he’s a good player. Teams need good players in order to win. Fans want their teams to win. So they’re not going to punish him because they *need* him.
I’m going to have to disagree with you here. “Shuck and jive” is not a phrase that I would ever use around white people because it has a very specific connotation that’s rooted in painful history. I’m not Jewish, but I don’t think that “schmear” has the same kind of negative connotation.
I also don’t think that you get to tell me I’m being silly because I found that offensive, and because it sounded to me like Cuomo used the phrase with intent.
When I first read the lack of understanding what the word “lynching” means, I was frightened and appalled. Then, I remembered that my high school US history books and classes didn’t even mention lynching. If I didn’t pay attention to progressive media or watch Ken Burns’ Civil War, I would not know what lynching actually was.
The censoring of American history in this area is disturbing to me for two very different reasons.
1) It trivializes racism by acting as if the subject isn’t important enough to mention in history classes.
2) It is part of a broader censorship that the right has imposed on textbooks. Anything that makes the US look bad or any group of (hetero/white/Christian/male) Americans look bad is the target of rightist campaigns to eliminate inclusion on the grounds that it is somehow unpatriotic to teach children unpleasant truths. So much for loving the country enough to want to change it for the better.
In general, lynching was something that’s truely heinous.
This isn’t jive, or cakewalk, or even the more offensive phrases.
It summons some of the darkest of a culture’s nightmares into the light of everyday activities.
I don’t care that there wasn’t really a pattern, this is a one strike kind of thing. Just imagine if last year someone asked Larry Brown after a bad performance by his team, whether they should be “gassed”. Sure, there is a possible innocous way to percieve that question, but do you think that anyone would think more about not far enough past history than how tired people are?
Also, more people need to read their 1984, and some of Orwell’s other works.
Ignorance is cultivated, because control of the past is what all dominators seek above most things…
And one last thing…
Lynching was the preferred solution in killing the best of black men. Maybe nobody else wants to remember, but we sure damn well remember what happened in Tulsa and Rosewood. It is profoundly appalling for a sports announcer to suggest other golfers to lynch Tiger Woods in a back alley, because that is what whites DID!!.
Uppity n—– need their lesson, you know?
Incidents such as the one on the Golf Channel is exactly why we need a Sensitivity 101 class in our k-12 schools and colleges.
These -isms are across the board.
Correct, SarahMC. The things you mentioned above are very serious problems and should be called out as blatantly offensive each and every time. I’m also going to add the “man enough” jokes coming from women. Such jokes are also blatantly offensive, and it shouldn’t be defended under any circumstance, either.
And shah, I will make sure that I read all of 1984. Also, more people need to listen to “Brother Where You Bound” by Supertramp.
kidlacan (way up in the first comment)- curious, around what age are you? i’m wondering what generation of youngsters it is that you’re perceiving “just doesn’t get it”. personally, i’ve been getting the impression that not-getting-it has no age requirement, to my chagrin.
also, “banana study”? what does it mean to call something that? i mean, if it’s a generic “banana > monkey > racist slur by implication” thing i can see how it’s offensive, but in that case i’m missing why you would call something “banana” when trying to dismiss it as…what? shoddy work? unscientific? or is the phrase an insult in its own right? i googled and didn’t find.
Margalis, the “single word or phrase” argument doesn’t work with the FCC; usually live television broadcasts have a 7-10 second delay in the feed. That way, the booth can scoop those lil offenders up and not let the audience hear them. Heavy fines and penalties are the rule.
IMO, this “accidental slip of the tongue” should have been treatedd the same way. I’d say that all racist and sexist comments/jokes should be. But it’ll never happen; so many channels make their bread and butter off of shock jocks like Imus/Stern/etc, and there would be the “ohhhhh, what about my First Amendment Riiiiights!!”
So as it stands right now, it’s okey-dokey to mention lynching arguably the best golfer ever on TV, but you can’t say Fuck, Shit, Cock, or any other of George Carlin’s 7 words. Because a 2 week suspension is a slap on the wrist; Imus back on after a few months is an outrage.
That ANYONE at Fox is on the air shows that TPTB and America are far closer to the fascist theocracy that Kate and I fear…
Also from Margalis: ‘This argument would be better coming from someone other than “Portly Dyke.” That seems like a pretty good example of filing down the edges and desensitization. Most of what she wrote applies to her own name.’
Oh PLEASE. So if I decide to nickname myself “Louise, the Fat White Middle-Aged Opinionated Bitch” that somehow negates what I’m saying???
C’mon…
It’s too bad I can’t split into two people right now, with one bloviating away on my own blog and the other taking care of the vital business I have to attend to tonight, because your last racism-discussion post, Pam, got me to thinking more systematically about how I was in fact educated to be functionally racist while blithely believing I was no such thing, and how it works. I thought I might write a biographical memoir, recapitulating from my earliest memories how my perceptions were shaped. Because as I said on that thread, the way it generally works, especially among those of us who have never had any conscious intention of being racist, is through controlled perceptions. Before we consciously think about anyone or anything, social cues have already scripted our reactions; the only way to hope to get past these is to recognize them for what they are and learn to see past them. The last thing we should be doing (at least as long as racism functions so powerfully and centrally in our society) is to try to forget and deny; we must gain some critical distance for perspective, but not lose sight of this very dangerous and active target.
But of course offical mainstream anti-racism boils down to “let’s just forget the sordid past and move on into the glorious unracist future, la la la!” Which would be fantastic, except for sheer historical interest, if only the present were not still functionally racist. But as long as racism remains objectively important, denial is its best ally.
Just beginning to skim SD’s comment thread someone immediately repeats the “la la la, this young babe in the woods wasn’t raised to be racist!” Well, no sh-t Sherlock, I was born in 1965, raised mostly in the Deep South, and by golly I thought I wasn’t raised racist either.
The thing is, an early commentator there was saying, “well, everyone in my area [my emphasis!] got along just fine!” Well, groovy. And how representative of the USA as a whole, I’d ask if I could, was “your area?”
Geographical apartheid is a major key to how modern US racism generally operates. The old Southern Jim Crow model, which was a direct modification of the old slaveholding order, had black and white living and working in immediate, intimate proximity, and worked by elaborate, explicit, social codes of caste to manage the hierarchy. But in the North, where the frank demand for White Supremacy was not generally written explicitly in the law books or appealed to directly by the authorities, a different pattern developed, with people segregated by neighborhoods. After the legal and legislative victories of the Civil Rights era, the old Southern version of anti-African racism became far less viable–but the New South simply adapted toward the Northern model.
And that is the sort of society I for one grew up in. I could see black folks on TV, but the ones I could see in person lived in different neighborhoods, went to different schools, or when we merged into the same high school were tracked into different classes, told different things by guidance counselors and the educational establishment in general. As a young child it was already starkly obvious to me what a terrible contrast was in fact enforced between the life expectations of a comfortable white kid like me and the black folks who lived in easy walking distance by the paper mill in Panama City, Florida. And because no adults spoke frankly about the whys and wherefores I picked up the knowledge that these things were taboo and dangerous to talk about. From TV, despite the fantasy worlds of happy diverse people getting along just fine, I also got the message of the dangerous divisions that in fact existed, between suburban people like me and “those people” in the inner cities.
I agree with Portly Dyke that the veneer of politeness–which lame as it is compared with real social justice, did at least represent some progress–has been brutally stripped away just in the past couple decades. It was always the conservative position that the racist order that in fact predominated then and still does now is somehow natural and inevitable, and that putting a happy face on it was at best Utopian Pollyannaism, and at worst a threat to the safety and security of those “naturally” set above seething masses below. The erosion of the optimistic pretense must either lead to a rectification of the basic injustice–or its reinforcement as the ideologies that once prevailed are once again restored into fashion. And clearly a lot more of the latter than the former has been happening.
I actually think there has meanwhile been some real progress at the grassroots level, that racism as an ideology makes less and less sense to more and more people. But the people it continues to make sense to, the ones it makes more and more sense to impose to, are the same people it always favored the most–the ruling classes. And it is they, not we the ordinary people, who control the cultural apparatus.
Someday I hope to write that memoir, describing the steps in the formation of a functionally racist ideological set of perceptions that from the inside, seemed perfectly unracist and fair-minded, while keeping me well within the bounds of a fundamentally (and withal, visibly, to an untutored child at any rate*) unjust system.
*”Understand this?! Understand this?! Why, a child of six could understand this!”
(Servant bows and steps away, Groucho calls over another and says)
“Bring me a child of six; I don’t understand this.”
–Groucho Marx in Horse Feathers
Bluebonnet, people have been complaining about how this generation is stupid, ignorant, decadent, and just Generally Not As Good As We Were Back In My Day since the Babylonians - that is to say, since as long as we have written records, we *know* it’s been the fashion to say that things are going to the dogs in ways they’ve never gone before, and civilization is doomed, DOOMED by the stupidity of the youth. Thus, odds are we’ve been saying it as a species a lot longer, but there’s no documentary evidence of it - only Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Chinese, Persian, Japanese, medieval European, Renaissance, Enlightenment, all the way up to the 19th, 20th, and now the 21st century.
Does that say *anything* to you?
(Hint: Sturgeon’s Law has always been true. Even in the Good Old Days. And plenty of the people lamenting - like my paleoliberal and neocon relatives this Christmas - how stupid and useless my generation and my younger siblings are - have been clueless/ignorant dumbfucks and privilege-blind themselves, in so very many ways. Smarter? Better -informed? More moral, more concerned for the welfare of others than their own? Some individuals, in some ways. But society as a whole? No more or less than ever.)
There’s no god-damned way a person who grew up here doesn’t know what lynching is.
I mean, even beyond school, we have, like Black History Month and stuff like that.
I can see how the phrase shuck and jive or tar baby or whatever might slip out in conversation; it’s quite possible to absorb those phrases into your vocabulary before you’re old enough to be aware of any racist connotations.
This is because their meaning is more or less neutral; if you say you aren’t going to hug the tar baby you mean you aren’t going to fall into some obvious trap. There’s nothing wrong with the meaning; it’s just expressed very, very poorly.
But there’s just no way in hell you’ll pull the term “lynch” into your vocabulary without knowing what it means, because it’s not slang; it means to get a mob together and do something awful to somebody.
I mean… essentially she said “all the other golfers should get together and kill Tiger Woods.”
Which is sort of a dick thing to say, whether or not you’re also being racist.
From Mark Foxwell…”about how I was in fact educated to be functionally racist while blithely believing I was no such thing, and how it works.”
Yup. Me too. The example above about Little Black Sambo deeply horrified me last night; my sister and I HAD a .45 record and “sing-a-long/follow the page” book of Little Black Sambo that our mother gave us! As well as about a dozen Disney ones- so I guess that made it “okay” in her mind. WTF??? What company MAKES such a thing and what mother BUYS it for her small children???
I couldn’t talk about that last night because I wanted to think about it. What you wrote here covers it far better than I want to attempt. Knowing my pack-rat mother, that damned thing is upstairs in the attic with the rest of the “saved from childhood toys”. That is going straight to a landfill and NOT to the grandkids!!
(Also born in 1965, btw.)
“…because your last racism-discussion post, Pam, got me to thinking more systematically about how I was in fact educated to be functionally racist while blithely believing I was no such thing, and how it works.”
Great observation, Mark, which matches well with my experience, even though I was born and raised in California.
I remember being 8 or 9 and asking my beloved grandfather why the (very) small town he lived in, located in the heart of the San Joaquin Valley, was divided into two parts: The town of [Small Town], and the town of South-[Small Town]…?
(I would give the name if there were more than a couple thousand people living there.)
He matter-of-fact-ly explained that South-[Small Town] was where the colored folks lived.
No shame, no apologies, no awareness of the evil of this arrangement, etc. The whole thing was accepted so easily it was scary (as I realized many years later). It was completely unremarkable to those who lived in this little slice of Apartheid in America…
In light of that kind of situation, it’s easy to see why casual racism (or “functional racism” as Mark said) would be a “natural” part of many people lives. Sad…
I haven’t thought it completely through yet, but I think that if someone asks for a quick bottom-line explanation of how racism fundamentally works in this country, the answer would be something like “geographical apartheid accomplished mainly by private means.” Though government policy–notably local government decisions about things like zoning, school funding, police procedure, etc, have a strong bearing on it.
And by “geography” I mean to generalize to a broader idea that has much to do with physical location but more generally with social space.
For instance, I’m pretty sure there must have been some African-American USAF officers somewhere in the Air Force when I was growing up (1965-1983) but I don’t recall ever meeting a single one face to face. If they were in the ranks then they were on a completely different career track from my Dad, who was mainly an interceptor/fighter pilot. I seem to recall there was one African-American family in our housing bloc (think something like a townhouse row that would fit into the architechture of Burpelson AFB in Dr. Strangelove built by the lowest bidder in upstate Maine) at Loring AFB) which presumably was all officer housing. But I don’t think I knew that family by name. Perhaps their father was on a bomber crew, or over a tech support unit or some kind of administrator? When I went to the Catholic high school in Virginia I rode a bus with an African-American girl whose father was an officer; she kept very much to herself.
Social space, you see. Lots of black enlisted men and women, but I never recalled seeing any black faces over an officer’s uniform at the Officer’s Club, anywhere at any base I ever lived at.
How did I square that with the belief that systematic discrimination was largely a thing of the past? Probably by grossly underestimating how many Americans our society deems “black.”
I remember observing once that a house in my cheap suburban neighborhood in Panama City, Fl, about 1978 or so (I was in jr high) had recently been occupied by a black family. And feeling great about it–hard evidence for my deep patriotic faith in the American way, post-Sixties reforms. One house, out of hundreds.
wow, and after i reposted this link on my traffic-less blog it took less than twelve hours for someone i know IRL to show up and start screeching that he NUH UH WAS NOT A RACIST, RACISM ISN’T REAL, WHY DO I ALWAYS CALL HIM A RACIST, WHY IS IT ALL ABOUT THE OUTRAGE??? oh, also, apparently, if racism *is* real, it’s somehow the fault of people in the 70s and 80s who did consciousness-raising about racism.
figure that one out.
sigh.
Also, more people need to read their 1984, and some of Orwell’s other works. Ignorance is cultivated, because control of the past is what all dominators seek above most things…
*sigh* I think you’ll find that in the book (and, IMHO, in real life), control of the past is an instrumental goal towards controlling the present. The Turkish history of the Armenian massacre springs to mind here.l
But I’d have to break the book out to provide actual quotes, and I can’t be bothered.
Oh PLEASE. So if I decide to nickname myself “Louise, the Fat White Middle-Aged Opinionated Bitch” that somehow negates what I’m saying???
Dunno. Are we talking about the tribulations of being a supermodel?
I am for the suspension of the golf reporter, I just think losing her job is too severe. The point that the comment was not cut during broadcast is a good one. I would like to see the FCC do much less of what it does but I suppose to be consistent it should probably levy fines.
roula: “also, “banana study”? what does it mean to call something that? i mean, if it’s a generic “banana > monkey > racist slur by implication” thing i can see how it’s offensive, but in that case i’m missing why you would call something “banana” when trying to dismiss it as…what? shoddy work? unscientific? or is the phrase an insult in its own right? i googled and didn’t find.
Wow, I really didn’t think I’d have to go into great detail to explain the racism explicit in naming a study about the tribulations of a racial marginalized area after anything associated with jungles or apes. Where the hell did you grow up?
You won’t find the study by googling. I research the topic of toxic waste in East St. Louis and came upon some local East St. Louis writers who noted the study, it was actually noted a few times. Whether or not the study is posted online available to a google search, I have no idea. I’d doubt it as I’d hope Wash U. wouldn’t be necessarily proud of that.
It took me hours of reading to run across it, if I have the time I’ll see if I can find the reference again. I’m sure that Wash U has it archived as well, although likely not online.
But thanks anyway for the insinuation that I made all that up. If you have trouble believing how bad racism is in this society, I’d suggest you sit down and do some studying. And no, I’m not going to provide with quick links and shit either.
What bellatrys said. The “kids these days don’t know/care about racism” wailing is self-indulgent horse poop.
History teachers ran out of time at the end of the year in *my* day, and I’m sure we weren’t on the cutting edge of Semester Mismanagement Practices. We nonetheless knew about the history of slavery and what lynching was. (I’m pretty sure we weren’t the *last* generation to learn that stuff, either.) The racists weren’t racists because they were kids, or ignorant: they were snotty privileged white kids, end of story.
It is true that people who did not live through the era of the Civil Rights movement will not have the direct, personal experience of how much that changed things; but that aside, I rather see that the younger generations are doing better than ours in awareness.
wtf kate, i didn’t think you made it up, at all. “banana study” just seemed like such a stupid, grasping insult, even for racism — like, the only logical “rationale” for the choice of words is one that is so over-the-top racist — that i thought i must have over-interpreted it, because who would be that unsubtle?
so thanks for confirming the hypothesis i supplied (note i did supply it, i.e. was trying to work it out for myself), no thanks for the string of disses and no don’t worry about supplying me with Links and Shit, i can amass a reading list like a big girl and while i’m always up for company and help, i doubt “i misread your question and think you’re an idiot” would be much of either. christ.
ps - thanks, though, for considering sharing the link to the study if you ever find it, because i’m interested in that sort of thing. however, if it’s that much trouble, seriously don’t worry about it and maybe i’ll come across it eventually in my reading.
Margalis, you also brought up a good point in my mind: just what ARE the current FCC standards? So I searched and found this:
http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:Ht9oGjBmlkwJ:arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061226-8495.html+fcc+fines+rules+standards&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=4&gl=us
Seems like until the FCC’s collective feet are held to the fire in court and RELEASE a clear, concise, and public list of rules with outlined fines and punishments for violations, essentially all of the networks are “playing Monopoly without knowing the rules”. And plenty are taking advantage of the vagueness!
Anyone know more than this? I’m curious…
I haven’t gone thru all the comments yet, but I want to agree with tzu’s comment. It’s easy for a person who is older to look at teen and 20-somethings and say, “It’s so sad that they don’t know the history.” But lets look at why they don’t know. Every history class I took spent eons on things that happened befor WWII, but the rest was thrown in at the end of the year and barely discussed.
As I commented in PD’s post, I honestly did not know some of those terms are racist. Lynching, yes, but cakewalk? No. What us “youngins” need (I’m 29) is the patience of older generations to teach us some of these things. I was 25 before I was cognizant that the racist stereotype of black people “loving fried chicken” existed. Now that I know, I can be aware when others use it and and call them on their bullshit.