At least they realize that racism and racists are bad ... only they don’t look in the goddamn mirror and think for two seconds.  Ever.

That this is even a topic for debate infuriates me.  I grew up in Oklahoma in the 50s and 60s under segregation and Jim Crow and only left in the 80s, when racism was still alive and well, if somewhat more subdued.  I now teach and research on race and ethnicity and so am intimately familiar with the data and research.  There is no question that racism remains a pervasive and perverse influence in American society.  There also is absolutely no question to any sentient being familiar with the data that the teabaggers, Joe, Wilson, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and all the rest are driven , in part, by rank racism.  It is not an accident that Obama carried working class whites everywhere except the south or that Oklahoma was the only state where Obama did not win a single county.

Gotta love that “Joe Wilson represents his district, so calling him a racist is unfair”.  I think we hear that same bullshit when it comes to “hitting women is our culture”, etc.

Logic FAIL.

The thing about it is that racists really are becoming a minority group, but instead of responding to that with some introspection or self-evaluation, they are just doubling down on hate and projecting what they feel onto those they deem inferior. They are clinging to white privilege like it’s the last life raft lowered from the Titanic. Their brains must be tied in knots to even contain the idea that what they are doing, saying or holding up on poster boards is not completely racist.

Not only are they lying about their racism, they’re lying about their faith too. These folks still claim that they represent Christian values but you never ever hear them utter anything that is Christ like. They aren’t interested in healing the sick as Jesus called his followers to do. Because the sick might be someone with darker skin than theirs. They definitely don’t want to feed the poor because their real messiah (Reagan) said the poor are all “welfare queens.” Their hate and racism have become so palpable that even leaders of the religious right, who were usually ubiquitous at all gop led anti-democratic forums, have fallen away. There are no more prayers for our leaders as there were when W and Cheney were in charge. No more prayers for our country. Just hate, fear, vicious rumors and unwarranted attacks on innocent people who just happen to have the same skin color as the president.

I’m the scion of a long line of typically racist white Americans, the kind of people who would never think of putting on a white robe and burning a cross on somebody’s lawn, but people who accepted and propagated the racism they learned and lived in for most of their lives.

My racist grandparents, and almost all of their co-generationists in my family are gone, so their sins go to the grave with them.  However, my father, very much alive in his 70’s, still clings to some racism, sexism, and other assorted bigotries.  These bigotries seem to me very much like icebergs: not seen every day, but when they become visible, it’s really hard to gauge just how big they are under the surface.

I try to shoot these things down as I come across them, and my wife and my (now 18-year old legal adult) bi-racial daughter have an active zero-tolerance policy, and won’t hesitate a nanosecond to straighten him out as needed.

I wish I could believe these actions will end the problems.  But my experience is my dad will hang on to them for the rest of his life.

Sadly, I suspect too many Americans are in the same place…

We have a few generations that have been raised on very two-dimensional caricatures of racism in this country.

According to what they have been told

EITHER
You are a KKK robe-wearing, lynching, dog-and-firehose segregationist who probably beats his wife and downs puppies

OR
You are not a racist

They don’t understand that there are so many shades of grey, and that calling someone a racist doesn’t mean they drive around in their pickup trucks looking for black men to drag to death, it means that they harbor racist ideas. And that it’s possible to be loved by your family, and an upstanding member of your community, and not spend all of your time thinking about how much you hate black people… and still be a racist.

What the right wing is trying to do (because they’re good at it and they’ve made it work for them in the past), is to dominate the definition using the either/or example I’ve posted above. Since racism in their minds can ONLY be defined by someone who actively hunts and hurts black people (and even then, they have to be completely “innocent” black people who didn’t “deserve” to be beaten up/killed)... or you cannot use the term Racist. And because the left wing isn’t budging on this, and isn’t letting them control the meaning of the word, they are losing their collective shit because the next thing you know we’ll be declaring that “liberal” isn’t a dirty word, after all, and that “pro-choice” doesn’t mean that you walk around with a coat hanger in your pocket just in case you see a happily pregnant woman, and ... terror of terrors ... that “feminist” doesn’t mean “wants to enslave all men in a horrible fiery gynocratic pogrom.”

“feminist” doesn’t mean “wants to enslave all men in a horrible fiery gynocratic pogrom.”

Hmph.  Speak for yourself.

Cross posted on Rosin’s blog:
Baltimore Mills is absolutely right - Ms Rosin is so far out of her element (which seems to be whining about how hard the little princess has it) that she can’t even fathom the flaws in her defense of conventionalism.  For those who haven’t recently been in a philosophy class, conventionalism is the moral stance that says moral principles derive their weight from the approval or disapproval of a society.  So, as long as one can find a group that holds those moral principals to join, then anything can be justified.  Even a child can see the flaw in that - but Ms Rosin seemingly can’t.  Perhaps she needs it brought closer to home. 

In certain societies or families (the smallest unit of society) it is still quite normal to use the epithet, “Kike” when taking about someone of Ms Rosin’s ancestry, or culture, or religion.  But of course Ms. Rosin won’t mind when Joe Sturm of that society screams “lying Kike” at her in a public setting, and has a framed picture of Hitler on his desk, because, after all, in Joe’s society, it’s just normal.  Right, Hannah?

Gavel Down—I’m telling. You’re breaking The Feminist Code of Appearance by snitching on our real motives.

Referencing your nostalgia about the 90s thread, all of this is the backlash to the mainstreaming of the idea that it is no longer “done” to be racist and sexist or to openly hate other races or women. We’re at the forefront of a similar shift nowadays with regards to being homophobic.

Yeah, it was in the 80s where a lot of the shaming grew and thus code-words began to dominate the narrative more and more, but it wasn’t until the 90s that it became so downright obvious that open loathing of women and other races was bad that they were teaching it to children as a given that no one these days is one of those nasty racists or sexists cause we’ve changed so much.

The problem was that the racists didn’t like that and many white people and men began to balk at just how much history showed them to be in the wrong and so the organized “anti-pc movement” started playing with the message to the “no one today is racist and those who say that there are racists today are the real racists” dodge which has let the racists and sexists back into the dominant narrative as something “counter-culture” despite it being a bad repackaging of the old crap.

But the problem is that the racists already lost the big battle and so now we’re seeing where the code-words are starting to fall apart (I suspect we’re less than a decade off if that on the code-words for women falling apart too) because everyone knows that it’s bad to be a racist, even if you goof up.

It’ll be interesting to see where it goes from here, but I suspect the growing interest in actual integration among younger people will make the old myth and lie model of enforcing separation untenable. But that’s just me being an optimist.

I was in a very small class at Vanderbilt with four white women (including me) and an older (60 something) black man and a 40-something white woman professor. One day, the older black man mentioned how scary it sometimes was to come to a class with five, young white women on a campus that when he was growing up, he would have been arrested for stepping one foot on the grounds.

The fact that these kinds of traumas, the legacies of past legal, institutional racism, has an impact on his sense of safety (and here I can’t but help think of the little girl who witnessed her mother’s attack—how will she ever feel safe just out and about again?). His fear was grounded in real experience. These racists white people may have “changed their views” or more likely learned how to hide it better, but until these traumas leave our collective psyches with the passing of earlier generations (where no-body remembers first-hand what it was like to be a second-class citizen or what it feels like to justify such injustice by virtue of first-class citizen superiority rationalizations), then how can we stop talking about racism?

Talking about racism makes you racist, if you’re a victim of racism you can’t talk about it because you’re biased, reverse-racism is the only real racism now that Slavery is illegal? Come on. These memes have to be put down and coherently. The MSM needs some serious lessons in how to frame stories. This everything is valid story-telling is ridiculous. It is not balanced to put a scientist and a global warming denyer on the tvee. How about two policy makes or scientists who different approaches to combating global climate change??? That’s a balanced story. A public health worker talking about scientifically accurate information about birth-control and the abstinence only statistics should not have to debate a pill-kills nut. They are NOT Equivalent! Moderate voice meets right wing extremist does not make for good journalism, it doesn’t even make good tv. If they seriously trot out some “former” Klan members to talk about “white pride” and how an “uppity” black woman should have no rights to correcting a white man in terms of door etiquette, I wouldn’t be all that surprised.

Also, just in reference to the case about the Cracker Barrel,I think that its very interesting it took place at a Cracker Barrel because Cracker Barrel is soooo interested in projecting that old-timey was the best timey image and to many white racists, that means when white and black folks were segregated. I wonder if he didn’t go off in response to having that illusion shattered by the reality that a black family might also enjoy the atmosphere and comfort food (yes, I know like most chain-restaurants, that Cracker Barrel is the caloric devil, but you have to admit that they have pretty good bad for you food…I was there last week because a co-worker wanted to go there for her birthday lunch and I will admit I had breakfast for lunch and there were biscuits and gravy and I spent the rest of the day in a content carb coma).

peace

DC Fem- This also.

Even during the 90s where “everyone knew” that racism and sexism were bad, the (actively) racists and sexists could make a case towards making up a majority or a strong enough minority that they only needed to woo the passively racist and sexist to form a voting block.

Now, the active racists and sexists are becoming a shrinking minority and not only that, but a provable minority on the issue of race in the fact that America elected a black man to the highest office despite every code-word on the planet being thrown at him. It’s not only being a minority, but a provable minority that’s driving them batshit, because the whole wingnut ethos requires a belief (among everyone really) that the wingnuts are really the majority or an overwhelming minority. This helps doubters and critics to silence their criticisms and those inside to avoid thinking about things (cause everyone they know believes it so why take a chance in finding they are all wrong and then being surrounded?).

And if the racist feels all alone, well then under that same conservative logic, he must be wrong and needs to find some other mainstream to be a part of, one he feels he’ll be too old and distanced to ever fit into and so he must deny reality with the focus of a thousand suns.

They don’t understand that there are so many shades of grey

Wingnuts tend to have a big problem with that in ANY context.

Thealogian-

Yeah, I’ve always hated the reverse racist crap, because it’s so obviously silencing crap that every racist and sexist and homophobe now resorts to as an attempt to avoid any sane discussion of the issue and essentially blacklist any accurate information from the conversation. I recently got into a heated argument with a sexist using the “reverse” crap in which any information detailing sexism was de facto sexist or “hiding an agenda”.

In general I blame the rise of “there are two sides, who can tell who’s right” reporting to suck off the so-called low-information “independent” voter for creating that artifact. They gave a script in which the group fighting against oppression or against say a corrupt evil party now owns a mythical equal amount of bigotry and nasty history to the force they are fighting against in order to avoid “bias”. This leads the morons of the world to pat themselves on the back when they fight for regression or the status quo, because they can see through both sides which are inevitably the only-now-considered-obvious racism of things like cross-burnings and lynchings and some black guy mentioning that obvious racism is racism and thus can move beyond that to a world where a massive fetish of white people hanging up nooses as threats all over America is just a meaningless practical joke and teabaggers are angry and upset just because they are mindless dogs easily misled by lies and not because they are freaking out over a black president.

I suspect every generation has their version of it, DFH being much older than its supposed origins (abolitionists were considered “fringe” and “shrill”), but it’s still infuriating.

EITHER
You are a KKK robe-wearing, lynching, dog-and-firehose segregationist who probably beats his wife and downs puppies

OR
You are not a racist

I think this distinction is the real problem and what prevents a meaningful conversation around race.  I find it’s a lot more helpful to think of racism like any other character flaw—you can do mean things and not be a horrible, irredeemable human being and you can have racist thoughts and not be a horrible, irredeemable human being.  When you do something mean, what is (hopefully) your response?  You acknowledge it, apologize, and work not do it again.

15-

Well, it’s a dual problem, largely steming from the wingnut “one drop removes the purity” idea. The idea not only that one racist act makes you a bad person in all walks of life or incapable of doing anything else redeeming is one problem, but the cultural narrative shifting away from that on the part of anti-racism forces has allowed the other problem.

That is that “real” racism is only the most (in hindsight) obvious acts of racism and are always in the past with no modern equivalent which allows those who not only benefit from societal racism but actively cultivate old-school antagonistic “I don’t care if they all die as long as I can watch” racism to fashion itself as racism free or at least “not as bad” which we tend to read as “innocuous”.

I think though, that among younger people, it is evolving into more of an “asshole moment” thing. Everyone has had a moment where they weren’t thinking and did something assholic or know that friend who’s ok, but kind of a dick and the complete asshole you had to cut off ties with. I think people are starting to see racism as more of that sort of thing (only applies to the young, the old whites are still in the “will they think I’m a racist just because I went to the cross-burning and cheered stage”)

It coalesces into two statements:

“I’m not a *racist/sexist/homophobe*, BUT *racist/sexist/homophobic assertion*”

and

“Some of my best friends are *fill in the blank* so I can’t be *racist/sexist/homophobic*!”

People are constantly filling in the exceptions to their world view which somehow cleanses them of their prejudice.  If they have a friend or relative that’s the “other,” and they like (or at least tolerate) him/her, then that means that they can unleash their inner racist/sexist/whatever because, after all, if they were *truly* racist/sexist/whatever, they wouldn’t like/tolerate said friend or relative!  See! Proof!

Of course, having said friend or relative allows them the added bonus of being able to say “I know a *blank* and let me tell you, they’re always like *behavior*.”

The fact of it is that everyone has these ugly little knee-jerk categorizations of others in his or her Ur-brains - what defines the educated mind is the constant struggle to reject those stereotypes and move beyond them.  However, if one’s part of the ruling or dominant class, it’s easier to listen to and obey those voices, and to take offense if those “things everybody knows” are challenged.

I think that its very interesting it took place at a Cracker Barrel because Cracker Barrel is soooo interested in projecting that old-timey was the best timey image and to many white racists, that means when white and black folks were segregated.

If I’m not mistaken, some years ago Cracker Barrel had an anti-gay policy. Not only would they not hire gays; if they hired you and then found out you were gay, they’d fire you.

Publicity and, IIRC, a boycott brought them around. But it’s kind of a tainted history. Anyway, what can you expect from a restaurant with “cracker” right in the name?

“EITHER
You are a KKK robe-wearing, lynching, dog-and-firehose segregationist
OR
You are not a racist “

Another example of binary, either/or thinking:

If you accuse one Obama critic of being racist, then you are accusing ALL Obama critics of racism. You see this in the claim that “We can’t even criticize Obama without being called racist, which is clearly bogus.” What they can’t understand is that the accusations of racism are NOT directed at any and all criticism of the president; it’s not the fact of criticizing him that is racist. Rather, it’s particular WAYS that he’s “criticized” that are racist (and I put “criticized” in quotes because much of the offending “criticism” isn’t actually criticism of any particular aspect of Obama’s plans/intentions/processes, other than in the sense of “I don’t like that!” without any reasons or arguments, etc, or even worse, “Socialism!!!” or “Scary black guy!!!”).

Part of the problem is Hollywood, where oppressors are usually pure monsters, where a rapist seems to be sprung from pure evil, and we never see that it might be someone whose disdain for his sex partners doesn’t mean he doesn’t love his mother.

A lot of the problem is Hollywood.  It’s why there’s a standard trope that’s used (typically in TV shows featuring a normal “good vs evil” conflict) for the odd Very Special Episode where the heroes run into someone who should be a bad guy and who they have to fight against, but who is shown to be a loving parent and husband, care about his community, et cetera and so on.  Just like the Very Special Episode where they show people on the same side as the heroes who are complete assholes and/or sociopaths.

And yet, in the real world, that’s normal.  To use the standard example of pure unadulterated evil commonly used since 1945, Heinrich Himmler was largely responsible for arranging industrial genocide o a level that had never been dreamt of previously, yet that same man had enough concern for the welfare of his men that he made sure there was generally no punishment or negative career effects on the ones who couldn’t stomach the work because he understood first hand not everyone could do it.

I think there’s a class status element to the denial of racism - racism has been portrayed as a “white trash” proclivity, so these people who appear to be middle class or even upper-middle class, presumably with a college education, feel that their class status is being questioned if they are called racist.
I’m not American and the most surprising thing about all this lunacy has been how “respectable” and sane many of these people appear to be, aside from their demented posters and statements. But of course racism exists at all levels of society, and perhaps the general media emphasis on the more overt redneck variety of individual incidents distracts attention from the more serious forms practiced by those in power, that have effects on far greater numbers of victims (i.e. racist sub-prime mortgage practices).

Amanda, I hope you won’t mind too much my threadjacking.

I’ve just read this blog entry on the Huffington Post. It summarizes and interprets the results of a longitudinal study on women’s happiness. You’ve written about this before, but there are some new and, in my view, interesting conclusions:

Nor, surprisingly, is [lower happiness scores in women today] caused by women bearing a disproportionate burden of the workload at home, the ‘second-shift’ as some have labeled it. This explanation falls not because women don’t do more cooking, cleaning and child-caring than men; they still do. It falls because when it comes to the sharing of ‘home’ duties, the trend lines are all moving in the direction you would predict would lead to greater happiness and less stress for women: namely toward greater parity.

So if it’s not the hours, or the attitudes, and if the inequality of home-work is fast disappearing, where does that leave us?

What do you make of this? The question is obviously open to other readers.

I think that part of the reason that so many generally decent white people are so timid about accurately labeling racism for what it is is that the asshole racists have managed to so successfully implement the “race card” charge that people have become gun shy about ever suggesting that anything is racism, for fear that they’ll get accused of playing the “race card”.  Somehow or other, many of many fellow white people have gotten it into their heads that if they dare call out any instances of racism coming from white people, that they must be condeming every single member of our race, including themselves.

And sadly, sitting on the sidelines thus becomes a new, perhaps unintentional, form of racism.

The whole “race card” nonsense has gotten so pervasive that you even see some prominent African-American mainstream journalists biting their lips as well when the topic comes up.  Stephen A. Smith, originally a Philadelphia sportswriter, has become a fairly outspoken social critic in recent years, and a lot of his work has focused on race in professional sports in America… he made his name at ESPN, but he’s now seen in non-sports oriented media more frequently, appearing on MSNBC a few times a week.  Last night Smith was on The Ed Show, and even he was timid about fully addressing the racism that’s out there in regards to Obama.

Limbaugh has made himself a fairly easy target, so there aren’t a whole lot of (rational) people who will get too upset about calling out his racist tirades.  But the framing has established that Limbaugh is where the racist continuum begins, not smack dab in the middle of it.  Yes, most reasonable people can agree that Rush Limbaugh says racist things.  But anybody who says anything jut slightly less offensive than Limbaugh is NOT a racist according to this framing.  It’s as if Limbaugh has just started to cross over that invisible line that defines whether or not somebody is a racist… no, he’s way, way, way, way past that line, and has been way over the line for the entirety of his public life.

On a completely unrelated note (but Amanda’s mention above struck me), has anyone noticed that Stuff White People Like regularly goes into glibertarian territory? I picked up the book and saw an entry on the ACLU that said, “The ACLU spends all its time focusing on Muslim and Buddhist causes but gives no time to Christianity!” Which… no.

21- I think you might be right. There’s this focus on the racism of lynchings and cross-burnings and myths that it was rural poor whites responsible (in actual fact, it was often middle-class family values types led by rich people) and a total ignoring of the more “benign” racism that was the whole white flight to the suburbs and the systematic white-washing of culture. I think there’s a “it was a long time ago and by ignorant backwater hillbillies” and something that can’t touch the respectable class.

There’s also a how you say it matters more than what you say aspect typical of the landry class and conservatives in general where it’s ok to be racist and to hold racist views, but don’t make it obvious and don’t be crude in your insinuations. Just never invite them to the table and obliquely reference all the violence in the inner cities.

23- Yeah, my suspicion is that the tactic has gained some ground in the fact that liberals (especially white “respectable” liberals) often want to give someone the benefit of the doubt before assuming they are willfully ignorant and hateful and so will invest time in educating and soft-peddling things especially in day-to-day interactions, which lets those who are arguing in bad faith to start with accusations of reverse racism and “playing the race card” to dominate the narrative and the conversation away from the concrete and overwhelming proof into a discussion of whether or not the liberal is calling that person a bad person and by extension every person of the dominant group.

In emotional aspects, it’s about making the oppressed person or liberal feel awkward for the accusation or for being offended rather than the racist scumbag who caused the offense in the first place. This power of awkwardness then lends the social weight that it’s worse to accuse someone of racism than to be racist and thus to speak out or not be racist in general.

It’s all part of the “we’re the real” majority posturing of wingnuts in general to use this social cloak of manners and liberal assumptions of good faith to posture as being the unspoken viewpoint of the majority of gatherers in any social event.

“Some of my best friends are *fill in the blank* so I can’t be *racist/sexist/homophobic*!”

Sure.  We saw that digusting level of transparency in the election of Michael Steele to be the head of the RNC.

I don’t question Steele’s qualifications to be the head of one of our two major political parties…. I question the motives of those in the party who voted for him.  I don’t think their vote was based on the belief that he was the most qualified candidate, but rather because he was an adequetely qualified African-American who could be used as a tool for them to try to fend off accusations of racism…

“How you can you say that the Republican Party harbors racism?!?!  The chairman of our party is a black man, fergawdsakes!!!”

Steele epitomizes the wanton racism and cynicism of the RNC.  He was elected for the job SPECIFICALLY because he was a black man, and the party, fully aware that they have some serious problems in terms of how the public perceives their attitudes towards race, figured they could address the issue by putting a band-aid on it and not changing a damn thing about their racist ways.  Essentially they decided that becuase they’ve elected a black man to a token job which theoretically signifies leadership, they are free to be as racist as they want to be because… “We’re not racists… Michael Steele!  Michael Steele!!1!11”

25-

Yeah, but I think a not-insubstantial part of the problem is that white people are more worried about getting their fee-fees hurt or facing a “wrong accusation” than actually looking at their ignorance or whether they are contributing to a hostile social environment.

I mean, even if we assume the worst and that every accusation is like calling someone Hitler, it’s still less worse than the consequences of the crap they are peddling and what nasty social policies they support to that end.

It’d be nice if not all of the work in every struggle is always put on those who struggle but on those who “unthinkingly” necessitate the struggle. It’s long past time that white people as a general group started putting in some leg work on the racism issue above constantly declaring it solved and then getting pissy when people point out it’s not.

And “being an asshole” is something I usually hear when someone is soft-peddling the fact that someone they love has either “become an asshole” (aka revealed hitherto unknown assholic beliefs or behaviors) or “is an asshole” (has always been an asshole, but is no so much so that it’s beginning to overshadow the good qualities).

Someone who has done one thing assholic are usually told directly that they’re being assholic or kind of a dick or is referenced in having made a dick move or did something not cool.

If you accuse one Obama critic of being racist, then you are accusing ALL Obama critics of racism. You see this in the claim that “We can’t even criticize Obama without being called racist, which is clearly bogus.” What they can’t understand is that the accusations of racism are NOT directed at any and all criticism of the president; it’s not the fact of criticizing him that is racist.

THIS.

I have a “centrist” cousin who truly doesn’t vote along party lines.  He voted for Clinton both times, Bush in 2000, nobody in 2004, and Obama in 2008.  He is not particularly liberal, but recognized the trainwreck of the Bush Administration for what it was, thought McCain was a clueless old man, and thought Sarah Palin was the most frightening candidate he had ever seen.  Had McCain chosen a less psychotic running mate, he might have voted for him.  He is firmly in the “mushy middle”.

He has since taken to buying some of the wingnut talking points about deficit concerns (while genuinely acknowledging that Bush was atrocious with his spending ways), and is skeptical of President Obama.  He has some criticisms of the president from a conservative perspective that have at least some degree of rationality to them (not that I agree with his criticisms, but they aren’t pure hateful wingnuttery, though they do seem misguided).

That said, anytime I talk about some of the obviously racist stuff against President Obama, he takes it on as a personal affront, as if I’m accusing him of racism personally.  Which makes me batty, because no matter how many times I say, “I don’t think all criticism of President Obama is rooted in racism, but a fair amount of it is” he still hears me saying, “If you criticize President Obama at all, I think you are a racist.”

You can’t have a conversation with that being your starting point.  I have never heard any pundit come out and say that “all criticism of Obama is rooted in racism”.  NEVER.  And yet, on the opposite side, I frequently hear people say that any suggestion that racism is a factor for some of Obama’s critics is the equivalent of saying that all of Obama’s critics are racists.

It makes you want to bang your head againt a wall.

“feminist” doesn’t mean “wants to enslave all men in a horrible fiery gynocratic pogrom.”

Hmph.  Speak for yourself.

Pogram - U R doing it wrong.

Being male, I won’t tell you how to do it right.

I want to start a Cultural Vigilante Force that expands the concept of, eg, denying the benefits of scientific progress to anti-science, religio-science activists and start knocking burritos out of Mexican-hating hands. If we have to eat the evidence to evade the law, so be it.

I have two different stories on racism. 

During the election a lady who works in my office told me that she was voting for McCain because, in part, she does not trust black people.  Which I told her was basically the definition of racism.  I then heard her complaining to another coworker later that day that it was unfair that anyone who criticized Obama or wasn’t voting for him was called racist.  I do not think that word means what she thinks it means.

The second story is about my sister, who works customer service at a retail place.  She was directing an African American woman to where to get their package wrapped, and asked to ring her up before getting things wrapped, rather than saving the tags from her packages.  Ringing things up before wrapping them is a recent store policy, although it may seem logical.  I don’t know if she was having a really bad day or just a jerk, but she got incredibly mad at my sister, accused my sis, who is most definitely not racist, of lying about the store policy, and of just doing that because she was racist and thought that the lady was going to steal the stuff.  The customer went so far as to complain to my sister’s African supervisor about the matter, and when the supervisor said my sister was the last person who would discriminate, and was just following store policy, the lady said he didn’t understand because he was African and didn’t know the history in the United States and stormed off.

I mention this story not to say, “Oh, my poor oppressed white sister, who was accused of being racist!” but to say that yes, she did get called a racist unjustly, and had her feelings hurt, and then, you know, got over it.  Neither her nor I took that experience to say, “Well, huh, I guess no racism exists whatsoever.”  And while she was very hurt by the accusation, she would never suggest that that experience was comparable to, say, being lynched, or even something lesser, like not-being-hired, or being routinely pulled over by cops, or being defined solely in terms of one’s race.  And she would no more make a generalization from that bad experience than she would generalize and say that white people can’t be trusted and that we should never accuse someone of stealing out of risk of hurting their feelings after a white American guy insisted he had left his wallet at the store, and not-so-subtly suggested someone at the store had stolen it.

33-

And if your sister had, she’d be kind of a bitch considering the well-documented daily experience of blacks of being treated as criminals when they enter stores regardless of class. So the black woman was actually correct about the history of race in America and how that affects daily shopping even if she incorrectly guessed that something that was store policy for everyone was just another example of the “special” store policy often applied to black shoppers.

That’s also something frustrating about the race or the sex or the gay talk in America. No oppressed group can have a bad day or get frustrated at something systemic without being crazy, irrational, and accusatory and if they are wrong about something being a part of that, it’s just an example of how they overreact and the problem isn’t so bad. Your sister didn’t react that way, but part of the problem is that she was unique in that. That that makes her remarkable rather than expected.

The white guy who assumed theft from the store with the african supervisor, however, has no similar excuse in his behavior and is making some pretty bad racist or classist assumptions from the get-go. Nor would anyone ever expect anyone to think poorly of whites because of that. Hell we don’t blame whites for the tea party crowd, McCain rallies, or the majority of serial killers and assassins and even white power activists are considered a fringe group most white people condemn. Whereas there is usually an automatic jump in thinking to one minority group’s behavior to all minority behavior, which often leads to the pre-emptive call-out (see Obama’s statements about Kanye).

It really is a pretty mess.

I find it’s a lot more helpful to think of racism like any other character flaw—you can do mean things and not be a horrible, irredeemable human being and you can have racist thoughts and not be a horrible, irredeemable human being. 

I think this may also feed into one of the reasons why the wingnut nation is so very freaked out by Obama.  His being raised by whites and rather out of the context of typical African American life means that he doesn’t play by their stereotypical rules.  To put a fine point on it, he deals with racism and racists in this very much Christian way.  They want him to be and act like Jesse Jackson, they want Al Sharpton, and they are NOT getting either.  That is not only part of how he came to be the President of the United States, but what confuses - and therefore, infuriates - the fringe elements most of all.

Comment #21: predeceased  on  09/17  at  12:44 PM
I think there’s a class status element to the denial of racism - racism has been portrayed as a “white trash” proclivity, so these people who appear to be middle class or even upper-middle class, presumably with a college education, feel that their class status is being questioned if they are called racist.

One of the more dangerous aspects of white privilege was that the South’s feudal system was so virulently obvious that anyone not associated with it could simply use that lack of familiarity as prima facie proof that they’re not racist. (“I’ve never even seen a banjo before!”) This stereotype is nasty for two reasons:

a) Racism is an institutional evil which means it, by definition, has to be supported by white supremacists in the north wearing suits and ties—and these individuals are the biggest problem, and—
b) Poor whites in the South who happen to not be racist and already are dumped on due to their poverty get one of the worst labels in our country applied to them.

(B) has other, vicious side effects. Since well-off whites apply the racist label to poor whites and the latter are already getting a raw deal economically, they are very vulnerable to being taken in by bona fide racist groups. These groups don’t offer shit but hate and buddies to hate with, so they aren’t really that appealing, objectively, but if you have basically no one else on your, er, “side,” (these groups aren’t on the side of poor white people, practically speaking, hence the scare quotes), they’re as seductive as a street gang.

Well-off northerners are often considered a greater supporter of racist structures than Southeners (including by me). I’m not saying that there aren’t lots of racist whites in the South; I’m saying the narrative that those people down there are the racists is perpetuated by many in the middle- and upper-class (whites, of course) because it imposes an economic and social test for racism when it should be a behavioral test:

Poor, white, redneck = racist
Banker using illegal mortgage scams against blacks & latinos = entreperneur

Hm. Think of this overlong post this way: how many times during the housing debacle did anyone in the media point out that targeting minorities with horrible (and usually illegal) mortgage deals was racist?

Once you’ve separated racism from behavior, racism becomes nothing more than a rhetorical gimmick. This is why it’s an early step in rightwing tactics on the subject.

Comment #33: acallidryas  on  09/17  at  02:19 PM
During the election a lady who works in my office told me that she was voting for McCain because, in part, she does not trust black people. Which I told her was basically the definition of racism.

Technically, it’s the definition of bigotry. Of course, since the bigotry plays into institutional power structures, it becomes a racist policy.

/pedanticism

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Yeah, it’s really eerie how much he’s exactly like the main character of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. He definitely knows the rule about being the first X and is definitely hewing the Jackie Robinson archetype of unflappable in the face of racism.

He doesn’t react in anger or fear, at most he pretends their bullshit code words are legitimate and they’ll be so happy to know that what they’re supposedly mad about isn’t real. He reacts like a sitcom dad with an “oh you” and hands reaching out.

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To be fair, I get more denial of racism and other soft racism from southern whites than any other regional group of whites, but the point is a fair one in that we use the most obvious region in regards to racial animus to both demonize all southerners (forgetting the number of blacks still stuck there for one) and to pretend that racism is a strictly southern phenomenon, and thus no one in a fine suit or from say California couldn’t lead say some of the most virulently racist campaigns in the last 30 years.

It also erases the systemic shit that has no face, which can be frustrating to combat and rather easy to perpetuate.

To be fair, I get more denial of racism and other soft racism from southern whites than any other regional group of whites, but the point is a fair one in that we use the most obvious region in regards to racial animus to both demonize all southerners (forgetting the number of blacks still stuck there for one) and to pretend that racism is a strictly southern phenomenon, and thus no one in a fine suit or from say California couldn’t lead say some of the most virulently racist campaigns in the last 30 years.

The irony of the “racist = old southern white people AND NO ONE ELSE” meme is that it was an 85 year old southern white man who just two days ago attacked the issue of racism against President Obama head on.

President Carter also astutely observed that we are lying to ourselves if we feed into the notion that the racism we see is coming strictly from the South.

that “feminist” doesn’t mean “wants to enslave all men in a horrible fiery gynocratic pogrom.”

Oh, damn!  I was so looking forward to that.

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Jimmy Carter is a fucking stallion. It’s pretty much canon that his presidency literally fucked puppies in the eye, but I really look back and wonder how much better our country would have been if President Senile hadn’t committed treason to delay hostage release until after the election and we could have done a period of sane actual healing after Nixon’s looting of the office.

Jimmy Carter is a fucking stallion. It’s pretty much canon that his presidency literally fucked puppies in the eye, but I really look back and wonder how much better our country would have been if President Senile hadn’t committed treason to delay hostage release until after the election and we could have done a period of sane actual healing after Nixon’s looting of the office.

Huge irony in that, too…

A white, rural peanut farmer from Georgia was a million times more racially tolerant than the well-dressed highly-connected Hollywood actor from liberal California that followed him in office.

I have a feeling the Carter administration will be historically re-evaluated in the context of the Cold War and the realignment of American international politics, the environment, and the economy.  The common “wisdom” is that Carter was a weak President who drove the economy into the dirt, was more worried about fuzzy little things like the environment, and was generally a wimp…but the man DID serve as a Submariner for the Navy - no job for “wussies” - , and Camp David is about the only peace treaty that Israel has signed that managed to last through the past thirty years…and he was ahead of his time insofar as environmental issues are concerned.

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Yeah, I made the same point with my off-hand comment about the Californian.

On another note, I’m born and bred Californian and it’s always interesting how everyone thinks Los Angeles (Hollywood) and modern San Francisco and thus nice and liberal and laid back and forgets that California is pretty much the historical source of almost all the rest of the “obviously bad” racism that didn’t originate in the South. We interned the Japanese, created the John Birch society, created the politicians who created and then perfected the so-called Southern Strategy, created the rapturists, was the site of some ugly incidents against Mexicans, native americans, and oh yeah, asian immigrants, and the birthplace of most of the codewords and memes regarding illegal immigration as well as the testing ground for many of the worst solutions to the process.

Let me guess: Hannah Rosin hasn’t been to South Carolina. Or North Carolina, for that matter. Or Georgia, other than perhaps changing planes in Atlanta.

NO white Westerners (people from the industrialised first world) are racist.  Only whites living in Africa are racist.  They really shouldn’t be there at all, but they are too retarded to figure that out yet.

Not only is this racist, it’s kind of ironic.  Considering, why yes, Mexico does provide universal healthcare to its citizens.  And is looking at ways to extend that coverage to those working in the United States.  And here in America, well, there’s Medicare so senior citizens do get coverage, but everyone else?  Not so much.

But that’s not what the mean lady meant, I’m sure.

I think the “racist behavior” vs “s/he’s a racist” can be a useful distinction, but may not be getting at exactly what’s going on. A lot of people have absorbed racist attitudes simply by growing up and living in a racist society (which the US overall certainly is). But/and, like all the other socially-conditioned ills we inherit, the big question is what happens next. And that’s where the conservatives are, as usual, denying personal responsibility.

The Washington Post editorial “Churls Gone Wild” by Jeanne McManus (editorialista emerita) might as well be titled “Uppity Black People Get Mad,” though it rebukes whiter-than-white Joe Wilson for his outburst. McManus censures Serena Williams and Kanye West, as well as Michael Jordan. Her depiction of Serena Williams waving her tennis racket comes dangerously close to racist caricature.

Read the comments; they spell it out. Then get brain bleach.

This month’s Harper’s Magazine Index has the best survery on racism in American asking people wpuld they presume a white person is more qualified than an African-American. Seven out of eight self-identified conservatives said yes, as did three out of four (ahem) self-identified liberals as did two out of five African-Americans. That last number is most telling of all.

Racism is not a particular set of bad acts or words, but rather is an orientation/infection of the mind.

There’s a gospel story of Jesus healing a blind man, Bartimaeus, and the point is not that Jesus is some good guy how does nice things (Yeah, go Jesus), but who he healed and what was this man’s disease. Bar Timaeus means son of Timaeus and the Timaeus was Plato’s paean to philosophy. In other words, we are most blind to the mental constructs and assumptions with which we interpret the world. So, of course people will deny they’re racist. They literally cannot see it.

Revrick @#51: beautiful.

Sara, here’s what people don’t get:  West, Williams, etc. are ENTERTAINERS.  Joe wilson is a CONGRESSMAN.

Even three wealthy black entertainers misbehaving (note the omission of Federer and his swearing match ...) cannot possibly come near to the level of stupid and inappropriate that one Congressman and his racist misbehavior gets to.

Oh, damn!  I was so looking forward to that.

Dr. Dick, you are hereby sentenced to DEATH BY SNUSNU!

Even three wealthy black entertainers misbehaving (note the omission of Federer and his swearing match ...) cannot possibly come near to the level of stupid and inappropriate that one Congressman and his racist misbehavior gets to.

Excellent point.

To further illustrate why Wilson’s behavior is so much bigger of a deal than that of the black entertainers in question, if someone finds the actions of Kanye West or Serena Williams to be incredibly offensive, they have an easy solution - tune them out.  Don’t buy West’s albums or watch his performances, and don’t watch any of Williams’ tennis matches.

With Wilson, it’s not so easy.  I’m not a resident of SC-02, so I don’t get a vote for who represents that Congressional District.  The most I can do is to contribute to Wilson’s opponents or volunteer time for their campaigns.  But at the end of the day, if Wilson gets re-elected, I have no choice but to accept that he gets a vote on legislation that affects me and everyone else… I can’t protest his membership by not consuming what he’s giving, because as a U.S. citizen, I’m obligated to follow laws passed by the U.S. Congress, including laws which he may have been influential in passing, even laws crafted by him personally which I disagree with vehemently.  Similarly, I cannot opt out of paying taxes because I don’t like the fact that a percentage (albeit relatively tiny) of my tax dollars is funding his salary.

We can “opt out” of consuming what is being offered by the entertainers in our society if they offend us… we don’t have the option of opting out of paying the salaries of disagreeable legislators or obeying the laws passed by legislators who offend us.

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I was posting at work so perhaps could have written more, but yes, your explanation is what I was getting at.  Not only would she not have generalized about the white guy, but pretty much no one would have, and if they did, it would be considered very, very bizarre and completely un-understandable.  On the other hand, people make generalizations about other races based on one experience- or the story of one experience- all the freakin’ time.

Also to say that 1) racism actually does exist, and people are not entirely incorrect to assume racism and 2) if they incorrectly assume racism and yell at someone it’s not the worst thing in the world.  Being on the receiving end of discriminatory store policy is far worse than being on the receiving end of being accused of discriminatory store policy-on average.  I’m sure someone can find a horror story somewhere.  And so it is far more important to call out racism when you see it, then to try to protect the delicate sensibilities of someone who might be called racist.