Everyone is a racist?

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Concentrating on who is or is not A Racist is totally distracting, because it usually leads to people defining bona-fide racism as some kind of official card-carrying Klan membership, or defining racism as "hating" some particular ethnic group -- two things that very few people do. Defining racism this way allows people to comfortably exempt themselves from the issue ("I don't hate anyone, I'm not a racist"), and in the process allows them to pretend that racism doesn't exist ("I don't see any white supremacists around here").

What's more useful -- and what the "everyone is racist" line usually wants to encourage -- is for all of us to accept that there may be racist assumptions, from the serious to the imperceptibly mild, in a lot of the things we think. This is not the end of the world; it doesn't make us cross-burners; it doesn't mean we're bad people. But it's not a good thing, and so we should all make sure to examine our beliefs and make sure they're founded on solid ideas, not racist thinking. And pretending that racism is solely the province of actively hateful people and crochety old bigots tends to allow people to avoid every doing that kind of thinking.

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speciesist

how many did you sleep with?

So is everyone a racist? It was said to me that "everyone is a racist." Either everyone is a racist or they are not. nabiscothingy, you're a great articulator, but I'm not in search of well-constructed bullshit.

I disagree. That's equality of opportunity, and it involves turning a blind eye to "differences that make a difference", things like skin colour and how it does alter the life experiences of its owner. (Leaving out the question of whether it should.)

Equality of result, on the other hand, depends on treating people according to their situation. Not turning a blind eye, but looking, and acting accordingly. Looking at actual results rather than imaginary opportunities. For instance, any one randomly-selected black person may not be poorer than any one randomly-selected white person, but the average black person is poorer, and to ignore this is not to do anyone any favours. It cannot result in justice of result, of perception, of policy.

If "racist" means "a person who takes race into account in his/her perceptions" then yes, we are all racists. And until race is no longer a difference that makes a difference, we need to be.

What's the philosophy behind whether or not 2+2=4? Six paragraphs by tomorrow morning.

You're never gonna get tired of that'n, are you?

No, because there can be no justice without it. I'm sick of equality of opportunity being used as a get-out clause, a cop out for those with no interest in social justice, but who want to sound like they're with the program.

In driving the meaning of "racism" to the point where it applies to everyone, it may not be immediately apparent that the whole concept has been robbed of its meaning, since those who accept this idea shall retain their habit of thinking that racism is something signifigant and those who don't accept it will retain a concept of racism that has a menaing. But, if this theory were ever to be accepted as a truism, no one could think coherently about racism any more and it would become an empty word.

Not from me, because I'd have to post

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after all of them.

If you look closely at it, that statement undermines itself, though. Because it could be paraphrased "Every statement which says "every statement is X" is X..."

(I think the question as posed is silly, and the question as framed by Nabisco and Momus must clearly be answered yes. Good night everybody!)

Until relatively recently from an historical standpoint, we had laws in the U.S. called Jim Crow laws. Many of them were still in place as late as the 1960s. Politicians who weren't comfortable repealing the Jim Crow laws took to arguing exactly the same sort of line you''re taking here: as long as both black and white are drinking from the same fountain, and the water's of the same quality, why should anyone complain? After all, equality of result, right? It's hard to imagine, under the ideology you champion, any objection to separate facilities for races - hospitals, libraries, public parks - unless the objection were "it's a waste of money" - which it isn't, if the "difference makes a difference," eh?

In the eighties we called that sort of approach "apartheid" but I guess it's way cutting edge now

There's a nice joke in Nabiscothingy's Daniel Johnston piece about this. "This is rich people's Mountain Dew," Johnston jokes, sitting in a limo on his way to the Whitney. "When I buy Mountain Dew it's from an old broken-down gas station."

The US also had a series of draconian Chinese Exclusion Laws in the 19th century. They limited Chinese immigration until the 1940s (and were only repealed so that Chinese could be drafted into the army in WW2) and they too weren't fully revoked until the 1960s. But guess what, separate facilities for Chinese are flavour of the month in New York City, where, for instance, new medical facilities are being opened with Mandarin-speaking staff and Chinese murals. For some reason, this is not referred to as "apartheid".

I mean, they might have just been getting more enlightened about how hey... we're all racist.

there are racist acts, thoughts, beliefs but not really racists unless you believe that identities are stable enough to brand a particular person's essence that way.

i think it's better to avoid the term (whenever possible, i dont wish to get rid of it) because to focus on the other ways that racism exists is more productive, if only because it automatically situates what racism is in a context (ie, racist to whom? against whom is it discriminatory) with consequences.

In driving the meaning of "racism" to the point where it applies to everyone, it may not be immediately apparent that the whole concept has been robbed of its meaning, ......... But, if this theory were ever to be accepted as a truism, no one could think coherently about racism any more and it would become an empty word.

Surely for this to be true, the statement "everyone is racist" would need to be synonymous with "everyone is necessarily racist"?

Okay, I am not a big fan of the "everyone is racist" line, but in its defense, the statement above is flatly untrue! We can say "everyone gets angry sometimes" -- that doesn't change our understanding of "anger," does it? We understand that people get angry to different degrees and at different frequencies -- some people get incredibly angry all the time, and some people get mildly angry once in a long while -- but we understand that those are both forms of a thing called anger, and that pretty much everyone experiences it at some point. What the "everyone is racist" line wants to get at is that we should deal with racism a bit like the bad kind of anger: people slip into it now and then (always have), but you have to catch yourself and make yourself do or think something better.

As for Momus's line, that shouldn't really be controversial -- conservatives have for years tried to advocate some kind of abstracted color-blindness, and it fails precisely because it doesn't acknowledge when race does indeed make a difference. Having ideas based on race is not racism -- it can also be sociology or cultural sensitivity or a lot of positive things. I think the difference basically lies in how accurate a picture of the world your ideas about race are providing you with, and that's really complicated to sort out (which is why having a "racist" idea is not always so clear-cut).

If you have ideas about what a cultural group is like that are built on solid information, that are fair-minded, that don't have an agenda, that are not racially determinist, that are held loosely, and that you're not using to judge individuals, then those ideas aren't "racist" -- they're good-faith observations. If you have ideas about what a racial group is like that are built on distorted third-hand stereotypes, that are closed-minded, that have an agenda, that are racially determinist, that are held inflexibly, and that you use to prejudge individuals, then those ideas are "racist." There's a very vague gray area between those two things, and this is why it behooves us to admit that we may indeed sometimes drift toward the wrong side of it -- all this means is that we should think our ideas through and try to steer them in the best direction possible.

good point. "everyone is racist" is probably just responding to the need to de-essentialize the term. but it's still logically silly because i dont think "everyone is racist" is really analogous to "everyone gets angry"--one is a mood, one is proposing what a person is. unless we mean "every gets angry" to mean "everyone is an angry person in essence."

Now, under this regime, each time you start to talk about racism, you are required to distinguish whether you are speaking of the "bad" kind (the analog to "bad anger") or the other kinds, or no one will be able to understand your point.

This is similar to talking about "stuff". Until you begin to add details that categorize the sort of "stuff" you are interested in, the word "stuff" is a placeholder, an empty concept requiring differentiation in later statements.

You can, of course, say a lot of things about "stuff", all of which will make sense to you. Buy your readers or listeners will be required to hold open the object of your statements until the vital information is conveyed, so they can backfill a meaning into all the statements where "stuff" appeared. If you withhold that vital information, then nothing meaningful will be communicated.

[shrug] You could disagree with that, but that looks right to me.

Dude, that's the whole point! Talking about it this way leads you to actually explore the different shapes that racism takes. And making those distinctions -- poking around a spectrum -- describes racism MUCH BETTER than some system where you either are one or aren't. In that latter system, racism only ever means one thing. And that's not true of the real world.

under this regime, each time you start to talk about racism, you are required to distinguish whether you are speaking of the "bad" kind

I think I was pretty clear about not making those value judgments at all! Plus I'm not positing a "good" kind of racism: ideas about race that are accurate and fair-minded and intellectually supportable aren't racism, they're observation.

Until you begin to add details that categorize the sort of "stuff" you are interested in, the word "stuff" is a placeholder, an empty concept requiring differentiation in later statements.

Precisely, though I preferred the analogy to "anger." We all know what anger is and have an idea of what lies in its core. But saying "anger" is approximately as unspecific as saying "racism" -- what kind of anger? What kind of racism? Are we talking murderous rage and Klan membership, or mild pique and a passing stereotype? If we're looking to tackle racism (or anger), it doesn't help us at all to define it as one or the other, and talk about it as if it only exists in some official, narrowly defined form -- because that's not how it exists in the real world!

I mean, look, defining racism as a rigidly defined thing is dangerously close to being a giant cop-out for white people: it allows you to create a kind of closet full of flat-out bigots, hang a sign that says "racism" on the door, and pretend that the entire issue of racism is completely contained in that closet, so you never have to think about it again -- or actually bother looking under the rug and between the couch cushions, where there's plenty of racism left. And that would be a very shitty thing for people to pretend. "It's over. We cleaned up. All the poison is in that biohazard box. Honestly, really, the air in here is fine."

i obviously feel that it's the former for almost strictly logical reasons (plus i just dont think anyone hears "everyone is racist" and thinks "yes we all participate in a social context in which racism plays a role" they think "yeah black people and white people all have a little racism in them, essentially, even if they pretend otherwise", but if you feel like it's the latter and can defend it then at least we're on the same side.

Racism = a suprematist ism "you are inferior, we are the master race", using bigotry to scapegoat a group of people, and dividing people into opposing groups using prejudiced assumptions to label them. Then there's criticism that people actually deserve and take on themselves with their own behavior. Racism is based on prejudging things that people can't help, but what about culture and identity and beliefs?

Real racism and other kinds of criticism should never get lumped in together but that's what I think "everyone is racist" often means. When it does it's easy to use for thought policing and right-wing trojan-horse politics. Speaking of identity politics, any idea that won't let itself be criticised is worthless. Tired old republican lies about "a rising tide lifts all boats" get criticised by lefties when it comes to selective tax cuts, yet it's bad to criticise the process of selecting identity groups for affirmative action and shuffling privileges around in a shell game, instead of across-the-board social benefits from the bottom up. "Everyone is racist", no, but every racist hates criticism.

Since, as you would have it, everyone, whether white or not, from Tierra del Fuegans to Lapps and Letts, to children raised by wolves, is racist, regardless of thoughts, feelings or actions, then I can see why this desire to know What is Racist and What is Not would seem like a rather foolish quest to you.

OTOH, I happen to think that anything I am that cannot be defined by any known or knowable set of thoughts, feelings or actions is rather vague, is not especially easy to make sense of, and must ultimately be deemed irrelevant to my thoughts feelings and actions - which outcome I conclude would somewhat defeat your purpose of convincing people to even pay attention to racism at all.

And I'm not sure why it would only be white people who would fall under this category. A few Asians might sneak in there, too. It would be just like them, you know. ;)

Everyone's a little bit racist
It's true.
But everyone is just about
As racist as you!
If we all could just admit
That we are racist a little bit,
And everyone stopped being
So PC
Maybe we could live in -
Harmony!

Partial video of same:
http://www.avenueq.com/video/racist_high.ram

That said, I think the tendency to racism is deeply, genetically ingrained in the human species, and we're fortunate enough to have enough neocortex to inhibit violent rampages against neighboring clans that look, smell, dress a little different. Want to stop racism? Work tirelessly towards miscegenation so that in a few centuries everyone is slightly brown, slightly squinty eyed, and slightly bad at team sports. Then we can all get back to abusing each other for more substantive reasons like bad musical taste.

oh believe me lots of people are.

Aimless, I'd appreciate it if you'd avoid being a giant fucknut and actually read what I've said on this thread, including the two different times I've said that I don't agree with the "everyone is racist" line and am mostly trying to explain what the line "wants to mean."

I think I wind up saying about every three months on this board that I think of the word "racist" in about the same terms I think of the word "classist." We all tend to be okay with using "classist" in the way I'm describing here -- as a way of talking a lot of beliefs, some minor and some major, some almost well-reasoned and some flatly ridiculous. We can happily substitute "prejudice" as a word for talking about the same thing -- we can substitute "gafloogle," so long as we all know what we're talking about. But I do worry that there's some complacency and conflict-avoidance behind the idea of writing off "racist" as the too-strong big scary bogeyman word that we're not going to use anymore. And who's to say that 20 years from now we won't just be doing the same thing with "prejudiced?"

I think I'd honestly rather see things go the other way -- toward a world where one can question whether an action or idea is a bit racist and, instead of freaking out and trying to make the word go away, people might actually say "Really? I don't know -- let me think it through carefully and decide whether or not I stand by it." This would also have to be a world in which people were willing enough to talk about race that they might stand by it -- a world in which, instead of freaking out, people would talk through and defend things on their merits. And yes, this means defanging the word "racism" a bit. But the interesting thing to me is that it's largely white people who put the fangs in the word, via a terrific fear of it -- it's largely white people who feel that talk about race is terrifically fraught with risk, and largely white people in charge of the consequences of those risks. I wish it weren't so. There are lots of accusations of racism in the world, and plenty of them are totally off base -- and yet one thing I rarely see is people accused of racism who will defend themselves and explain their thinking in detail.

The defanging/muddying of 'racism' as a concept has already led us to a drumbeat of incrementally false equivalencies that sees the average rightwing blogger calling Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton the 'biggest racists in the country' with straight faces and probably clear consciences - and why not? They're just taking advantage of the increasing imprecision of the concept that we're contributing to with shit like "everyone is a racist". The fuck I am. Racism as formally or informally articulated ssentialist supremacist thinking also, as you indirectly pointed out, puts more of the proper onus on the accuser/interrogater to frame his/her argument and articulate the issue in a constructive manner toward a constructive result. Too often racial dialogue(in the U.S.) plays out as a worst case scenario of sloppy accusation and disingenous-but-technically-true deflection but with such nebulous goalposts why should it be otherwise?

As for that second paragraph, here's the thing: if we define racism as strictly essentialist/supremacist (and maybe also "conscious"), that doesn't actually help us at all when it comes to dealing with our sloppy, nebulous conversation about race, does it? Yes, on the one hand it might pin down one thing, make it distinct and non-sloppy -- but it also cordons off that thing and puts it in a closet that no one ever opens (because hardly anyone is a serious essentialist/supremacist). And the result isn't just that we don't talk about what's in that closet, but we also can't talk about how stuff outside the closet might have to do with things inside it, you know? I worry that it takes an issue off the table and takes an idea out of play. And the reason that worries me is because I don't think it's possible to make easy distinctions between essentialist/supremacist racism and the kinds of things that happen day-to-day -- there's can be a whole lot of connections and gray areas and sliding-around along the spectrum. So instead of having "clearly defined" words for each part of the spectrum, I don't think it's necessarily bad to have a word for the whole damn thing.

THAT SAID, this discussion is a bit niggling and academic, because like I've said, I think I -- like most people who want to have useful conversations about this stuff -- tend not to call anyone "racist" or anything "racism," because the words freak people out and don't contribute well to conversation, and besides, there are always much more specific ways to pinpoint exactly what you're talking about in any given instance. (You're always better off sticking to the specific thing you're talking about, rather than blowing up to the conceptual level of "racism.") Most of what I'm talking about here is the conceptual end -- how we might talk about "racism" in a broad, almost academic sense, not really how you'd talk about specific actions and events with people around you.

[orly.jpg]

For a talented and accomplished quibbler such as myself, this is the case for any and every word or concept. Just for the mental exercise, I just sat down and used my quibbling skills to prove the following:

Imagine, if you will, a 220 lb. adult white male repeatedly screaming the word "nigger" just a few inches away from the face of a 45 lb. black girl. Now imagine an elderly white grandmother sitting alone in a room, just looking out the window and breathing quietly. Now, most people would accept that one of these acts is racist and the other is not.

I submit that, if you carefully examine the continuum connecting these two acts, there is no dividing line on that continuum that marks the point where the act of quietly breathing moves into the realm of not being racist. Any such division you can make is purely random and arbitrary.

This is merely another instance of Zeno's Paradox. It is only necessary to move along the continuum between these acts at sufficiently fine increments to thoroughly confuse the effort of clearly defining them apart, and to quibble it to death.

As it happens, this approach to thinking about the world comes naturally and easily to intelligent people who like to think deeply about what they see and experience. But, in order to extricate yourself from the meshes of this paradox, you must be willing to drive your thoughts to their final absurdity, until you awaken from your reveries to discover that your quibbles have pulverised your subject matter to such a fine dust that it has entirely vanished.

So instead of having "clearly defined" words for each part of the spectrum, I don't think it's necessarily bad to have a word for the whole damn thing.

I agree that we cannot create new words for each and every nuance of such a continuum, as the effort is subject to the same process of quibbling apart into ever-finer particles. But I disagre that the better alternative is to apply the same word to each end of the apparent opposites on the continuum. This would be tatamount to discovering that black shades into white by imperceptible shades of grey and concluding that it isn't such a bad thing to designate the entire spectrum from black to white, as "black", because essentially, they are all just gradations of black.

The convention of defining "racism" as formally or informally articulated essentialist supremacist thinking or something similar is [shock, horror!] only a convention and an arbitrary one at that (as all conventions are). But it is a useful convention. The word is a good tool that fits a situation that requires defining.

Otherwise, you may find yourself having to agree with statements such as:

'Racism is not invariably bad; a certain amount of it is necessary for the health and vigor of every human society.'

or:

'The question of exactly how much racism is optimal is one upon which thoughtful people may disagree, but I think it is obvious and proved that racism is not something we can or should dispense with; it is too valuable.'

I hope you understand that this argument I am making is not about the validity of your observations about what you are identifying as racism, or the existance of such a spectrum, or the usefulness of acknowledging its reality. My argument is about the wisdom of preserving conventions and definitions that impose admittedly arbitrary limits to a concept, as opposed to the wisdom of reducing these to intellectual mush - however intellectually tasty or nourishing such mush may be.

[Incidentally there actually are words used to talk about the amount of black across a black-white spectrum -- for instance, "grayscale." And in practice, that's actually more useful. Describing black as black and white as white doesn't actually get you very far; talking about grayscale, and its different balances and presences of blackness and whiteness, is a lot more specific.]

Of course, this will most likely sound like gobbledygook to you. It is, of course. Sorry. Silly me. Best I can do.

Your requests for (a) and (b) are merely the inversion of the Zeno paradox. In this case, you are asking me to isolate the extreme far end of the continuum, the case where an action is pure and unmixed racism, having no tinge of any other quality that goes by any other name. This is just as much a chimera as a clear, absolute and non-arbitrary dividing line between what is racist or not.

I don't have any problem with admitting that your observations have validity. Like I said, the world is mush. But the goal of language is not to create an exact reflection of reality, as if in a mirror, but to convey meaning. Meaning, to a very large extent, is not inherent in the "blooming, buzzing confusion", the mush of what is observable; it is more a distillation, a concentrated essence, an exclusion and selection. It is artificial.

If "racism" could be measured and quantified in the same way that greyscale can be, then it would be simple and obvious to apply that model to our understanding of it. I am not so sure it can be. I am willing to be led, though.

Could you, kind sir, express to me how one is to measure an act to discover if it is 50% racist or 60% racist, so that objective observors could agree that no mismeasurement has occurred? I'd be happy to know.

A: Swim in the mush of talking honestly and specifically about race, rather than finding it "uncomfortable" and rushing for safe harbor. (Because you sorta-kinda owe this to people who aren't given safe harbor from having to think about race.)

http://data.tumblr.com/10327367_500.jpg

http://www.alchemysite.com/blog/sisyphus_sign.jpg

l-r: nabisco, threads about race on ile

aimless is an idiot

http://www1.wsvn.com/images/news_articles/389x205/Michael_Richards.jpg

COULDA BEEN ME UP THERE JEEZ MAKES U THINK

http://www.newsweek.com/id/214989?GT1=43002

babies r stupid

http://theawesomer.com/photos/2011/02/022711_antijoke_chicken_meme_3.jpg

anti-joke rooster?

maybe this needs a poll.
https://medium.com/illumination-curated/there-are-4-kinds-of-racists-which-one-are-you-375fb5115fd9

maybe it doesn't

Please God don't

No Brad Paisley, no credibility.

amazing that there has not been a thread about racism on ILE since the great Nabisco-Aimless Debates of 2007

great revive

Not actually expecting anyone to be like well I'm a little bit supremacist, a hit ferishist, but most days I'm just a boring ineffective non racist (though not really)

I'm sure several ILM members would put me in a few categories.

Are you trying to spin not thinking about race into the only reasonable response?

Yes. I am a sucker who always takes the bait. I was trying to examine whether "everyone is a racist" is a useful construct.

One acceptable answer is that it is very useful, in the nabisco sense, which is essentially rhetorical. In the same way a pacifist might start an hour long public lecture on pacifism with the declaration "everyone is a murderer". It shocks our complacency by violating the normative sense of "murderer" and immediately demands the response "Say WHAT?! I'm a murderer! What the hell do you mean by that?"

Which the pacifist immediately follows up by a long and nuanced explanation of what they 'meant by that', drawing ever finer distinctions between degrees of culpability in war. And by the end, the 'meaning' of the initial statement has been redefined, even if the pacifist has not in any way altered the audience's normal understanding of the word "murderer" and its applicability in normal conversation.
Since its intended use is as a rhetorical device embedded in a much larger matrix of careful thought, then it presents a problem once it escapes the confines of that matrix: it still shocks, but now it lacks any answer to the immediate instinctive demand of "Say WHAT?! I'm a racist! What the hell do you mean by that?"

As nabisco saw it, the rhetorical value of "everyone is a racist" consists largely of attaching your desired explanation of what it 'really' means, but that cuts both ways. As we all have seen, GOP politicians simply discard the long tail of nuanced, thoughtful explanation that nabisco favored and replace it with the shortest simplest, least nuanced one possible: "Those people unfairly think you are a racist skunk, obviously that means they hate you."

That explanation works, too, because the statement is incapable of explaining itself. Which was the point I was trying to make. Poorly.

statement is trivially true surely. regardless of any strategic rhetorical concerns or outrage over acknowledgement

Seems like a relatively honest position to start from, at the very least.

is candyman a new poster?

Used to love that "I'm a little bit empathetic...I'm a little bit supremicist" bit that Donny & Marie would do on their variety show in the 70's.