I, Racist

[Nice Squirrel]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-metta/i-racist_b_7770652.html

What they are affected by are attacks on their own character. To my aunt, the suggestion that "people in The North are racist" is an attack on her as a racist. She is unable to differentiate her participation within a racist system (upwardly mobile, not racially profiled, able to move to White suburbs, etc.) from an accusation that she, individually, is a racist. Without being able to make that differentiation, White people in general decide to vigorously defend their own personal non-racism, or point out that it doesn't exist because they don't see it.

The result of this is an incessantly repeating argument where a Black person says "Racism still exists. It is real," and a white person argues "You're wrong, I'm not racist at all. I don't even see any racism." My aunt's immediate response is not "that is wrong, we should do better." No, her response is self-protection: "That's not my fault, I didn't do anything. You are wrong."

Even when we make shit up, we want it to be white.

And racism is the fact that we all accept that it is white. Benedict Cumberbatch playing Khan in Star Trek. Khan, who is from India. Is there anyone Whiter than Benedict fucking Cumberbatch? What? They needed a "less racial" cast because they already had the Black Uhura character?
That is racism. Once you let yourself see it, it's there all the time.

But here is the irony, here's the thing that all the angry Black people know, and no calmly debating White people want to admit: The entire discussion of race in America centers around the protection of White feelings. [bold: author]

Ask any Black person and they'll tell you the same thing. The reality of thousands of innocent people raped, shot, imprisoned, and systematically disenfranchised are less important than the suggestion that a single White person might be complicit in a racist system.

Discuss.

 

[Bronzeage]

Most people don't want to be the bad guy. Even more don't want to believe their life is in anyway better because of something bad.

Badness must always lead to more badness. Although I don't consider myself to be a racist, I do consider myself to be a realist. I know my life which has led me to become a middle aged southern white man has many times been made easier by the racism of other people. I was fortunate to always attend the top tier public schools. This was mainly because of where my family lived. It's no coincidence that better schools serve better neighborhoods. It may have been a small edge, but a thousand small edges add up to a big edge and I took advantage of all of them.

I make no apology, just an acknowledgement.

The burden of benefitting from bad things is real. It requires a high degree of denial to believe one earned everything one has through hard work and perseverance, but a lot of people carry it all day long. We all(rhetorical hyperbole) want to be good, or at least be seen as good.

A few days ago, I had conversation with someone who made the general statement that they were not responsible for what people did in the past. I gave him this scenario:

Suppose I stole your mother's car and there was nothing she could do about it. I give the car to one of my children. One day, you see them drive by in your mother's car. Is it still a stolen car?

How many generations does it take for a stolen car to become an heirloom?

 

[Tom Sawyer]

What, white people can't be from India? Sikhs are some kind of sub-species that can't breed with caucasians and produce light-skinned children? The author of that article is a racist dipshit.

While I understand that he feels that the premise "Khan enslaved a large portion of the planet and that's the kind of thing that one of the darkies would do" is a valid one, his misperception that criminal barbarity is a trait only found in non-whites is still nothing more than a hateful screed which has no place in modern society.

 

[prideandfall]

agreed, and it reminds me of one of those "mostly friendly, but then gets kind of tense and awkward" debate/arguments i had with a friend last weekend.
the setup is simple: we were watching Survivor, and a group of minority contestants (and by group i mean like 3 of them) were scheming and one of them said "i want to see one of us minorities win", and my friend got all butt hurt about how that's racist against white people.
i found this utterly ridiculous, and said that the only way you can possibly do the mental gymnastics required to turn a statement of solidarity between cultural/social minorities into anti-white racism is if you start from the assumption that "white" is by default the winner in everything all the time, and any good thing that happens that isn't designated to a white person is de facto taking something away from a white person.

i think that's the real cultural and social race issue: the assumption that white is the default position for everything, and anything not-white is an anomaly that somehow detracts from whiteness.

 

[TSwizzle]

FFS, it just goes to show Huffpo will put any hackneyed crap up.

 

[Bronzeage]

What, white people can't be from India? Sikhs are some kind of sub-species that can't breed with caucasians and produce light-skinned children? The author of that article is a racist dipshit.

While I understand that he feels that the premise "Khan enslaved a large portion of the planet and that's the kind of thing that one of the darkies would do" is a valid one, his misperception that criminal barbarity is a trait only found in non-whites is still nothing more than a hateful screed which has no place in modern society.

In a fictional universe where people zip from planet to planet and solar system to solar system, it seems kind of small minded to bitch about exactly where on the planet a person was born. As we all know, all Earthlings look alike to the rest of the galaxy.

 

[braces_for_impact]

I think the article made some very good points, and I don't want to make light of it by concentrating too much on the Star Trek reference, but Ricardo Montalban was the original Khan, and he was cast By Roddenberry, who named the character after an old friend from his military days that he was hoping would recognize his name and get in touch with him. Roddenberry intentionally cast minorities into roles as he believed everyone had something to contribute to the future of humanity.

Essentially, I think the article is right. There's a whole bunch of people out there that are pretty overtly racist, but do not think they are or don't wish to be called out on it. There's also white privilege, from which many of us benefit. As numerous psychology experiments show, we're racist deep in our bones. It takes a certain level of awareness to realize this and counter it. An awareness I've found many lack.

 

[ronburgundy]

The OP omitted the centerpiece of the whole story, identified as such by the author. Namely that in a discussion about racism, his black sister said to his white, NYC-living aunt that ""The only difference between people in The North and people in The South is that down here, at least people are honest about being racist." It is an insulting, accusatory, and objectively false remark.

Reasonably, the Aunt took this as the sister intended, as an insult of her character that she and those around her are rabid racists but also liars. The author points out that since then, the aunt has been defensive about the issue and still brings up that comment.

The quotes about denying the existence of racism, attributed to the Aunt, appear to be made up, or more accurately not intended as things she ever said but as the author's own speculation on what she feels and is thinking when issues of racism are brought up. This is important because those quotes not only fail to reflect how most whites feel about racism, but probably fail to reflect how his own aunt feels.

Whites don't like to be called racist for the same reason that blacks don't want to be called stupid and lazy. Because it is a personal attack on one's character and all people of all colors don't like that.

As to whites being defensive and making it personal when it is not "meant to be", that is in large part precisely because it very often is meant to be personal and apply to all whites, just like the comment by his sister was meant to be. That defensiveness is fueled by precisely the kind of pseudo-intellectual arguments we see on this board defining racism at the group-power level and thus defining all whites as racist and all blacks as incapable of it. IT is the ignoring of the fact that racism is at its core a psychological trait of individuals, and ignoring this leads to ignoring that racism does vary massively from person to person and its impact varies massively from context to context, often independent of whether the outcome in a situation superficially fits the schema of racist interaction. The author's sister is ignorant of that variability and thus painted all whites as equally racist no matter their actual varying socio-cultural context which according to any valid theory is what shapes racism.

The only whites that deny any racism in America are the hardcore racists, and they are a small % of whites and almost entirely politically conservative in general. Most whites, and probably his aunt, accept the reality of racism in America. They merely and reasonably object to being wrongly accused of it themselves, and to the ignoring that the actual impact of racism varies greatly across persons, regions, and context, and that not every single negative interaction between a white and a non-white entails racism because humans have negative interactions, and sometimes those human will vary in "race" even when racism had nothing to do with it.
Finally, the OP is full of shit when he claims that such objections show that people care more about being wrongly accused than about the whole aggregate history and reality of harm to blacks due to actual racism. It is a false dichotomy. The false accusations are objected to in the moment because they are immediate, and they do matter, and because they actually harm any meaningful progress in either discourse or policy in dealing with actual racism. Distinguishing real from manufactured racism is a necessary part of progress in reducing racism and its impact.

 

[Shadowy Man]

He sort of contradicts himself, which undermines his argument. Toward the beginning he says: "When I was younger, I thought it was because all white people are racist. Recently, I've begun to understand that it’s more nuanced than that." But at the end he says: "White people don't seem to care at all about the loss of so many Black lives." The problem with his argument is that "white people" don't exist. There is no single entity that encompasses the vast array of what "white people" may or may not think. He was right to think it was more nuanced than this, and he makes good points about the intrinsic racism of the system we all live in. But the system, despite being made up of individuals, does not represent the totality of all those individuals. By indicting every white person for partaking in the system that advantages them, he makes it hard to find allies.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-metta/i-racist_b_7770652.html

Even when we make shit up, we want it to be white.

And racism is the fact that we all accept that it is white. Benedict Cumberbatch playing Khan in Star Trek. Khan, who is from India. Is there anyone Whiter than Benedict fucking Cumberbatch? What? They needed a "less racial" cast because they already had the Black Uhura character?
That is racism. Once you let yourself see it, it's there all the time.

But here is the irony, here's the thing that all the angry Black people know, and no calmly debating White people want to admit: The entire discussion of race in America centers around the protection of White feelings. [bold: author]

Ask any Black person and they'll tell you the same thing. The reality of thousands of innocent people raped, shot, imprisoned, and systematically disenfranchised are less important than the suggestion that a single White person might be complicit in a racist system.

Discuss.

She's right. You can't have the system be racist without the members of the system being racist. This is just crap trying to pretend that there is still rampant discrimination against blacks despite not having discriminators.

- - - Updated - - -

A few days ago, I had conversation with someone who made the general statement that they were not responsible for what people did in the past. I gave him this scenario:

Suppose I stole your mother's car and there was nothing she could do about it. I give the car to one of my children. One day, you see them drive by in your mother's car. Is it still a stolen car?

How many generations does it take for a stolen car to become an heirloom?

Your child is not a car thief. As the car is identifiable stolen property it should be returned but that's all. There should be no punishment.

 

[bilby]

A few days ago, I had conversation with someone who made the general statement that they were not responsible for what people did in the past. I gave him this scenario:

Suppose I stole your mother's car and there was nothing she could do about it. I give the car to one of my children. One day, you see them drive by in your mother's car. Is it still a stolen car?

How many generations does it take for a stolen car to become an heirloom?

Your child is not a car thief. As the car is identifiable stolen property it should be returned but that's all. There should be no punishment.

If my dad gave me a car, and someone from the government comes along and takes it away and gives it to someone else, then that IS a punishment. Even before we consider that there may be sentimental value associated with a gift from my father, or a car I have owned and driven for years, I am clearly being effectively fined the cost of a replacement automobile.

 

[Bronzeage]

Your child is not a car thief. As the car is identifiable stolen property it should be returned but that's all. There should be no punishment.

If my dad gave me a car, and someone from the government comes along and takes it away and gives it to someone else, then that IS a punishment. Even before we consider that there may be sentimental value associated with a gift from my father, or a car I have owned and driven for years, I am clearly being effectively fined the cost of a replacement automobile.

As a general principle, stolen property should be returned to the last rightful owner. I have a friend who unknowingly bought a stolen car. The police seized it and returned it to the rightful owner. It was a 1975 Mustang, on which he promptly put new tires and wheels. It was a friendly deal, but the guy was having trouble finding the title. No one worried, because it was all friends. Of course, it's his fault for handing over money(partial payment) and not getting the proper paperwork, but it was all in good faith on his part. The car was towed away, tires and wheels and all. He was not punished.

It's not really a question of punishing people who are enriched by the acts(some criminal, some immoral) of people who are no longer alive. The question is, how much of today's ill gotten wealth still belongs to the people who lost it, and their heirs?

 

[bilby]

If my dad gave me a car, and someone from the government comes along and takes it away and gives it to someone else, then that IS a punishment. Even before we consider that there may be sentimental value associated with a gift from my father, or a car I have owned and driven for years, I am clearly being effectively fined the cost of a replacement automobile.

As a general principle, stolen property should be returned to the last rightful owner. I have a friend who unknowingly bought a stolen car. The police seized it and returned it to the rightful owner. It was a 1975 Mustang, on which he promptly put new tires and wheels. It was a friendly deal, but the guy was having trouble finding the title. No one worried, because it was all friends. Of course, it's his fault for handing over money(partial payment) and not getting the proper paperwork, but it was all in good faith on his part. The car was towed away, tires and wheels and all. He was not punished.

It's not really a question of punishing people who are enriched by the acts(some criminal, some immoral) of people who are no longer alive. The question is, how much of today's ill gotten wealth still belongs to the people who lost it, and their heirs?

All of it; and none of it; and everything in between.

What if the stolen property isn't a car, but a piece of land?

What if it wasn't you father who stole it, and gave it to you, but your great-great-great-great-great-grandfather?

Who can be reliably said to own anything, unless some arbitrary ruling is made? And who has the undisputed authority to make such a ruling?

In English Law, the 1275 Statute of Westminster set the beginning of time (for legal purposes) as the start of the reign of King Richard I - July 6th, 1189. If your ancient ancestors were robbed on July 7th 1189, and you can prove it, then the property is yours; If they were robbed on July 5th, however, then the property lawfully belongs to the thieves.

This is all well and good if the land in question is in England; but who owns land in the USA that was stolen from the Clovis people by the ancestors of the Blackfeet, who had it taken from them by the Comanches, who had it taken from them by the Choctaw, who had it allocated without their permission by the US Government to a man who sold it to another man who willed it to his son, who sold it to someone else, whose heirs sold it to Ted Turner?

It seems to me that if the descendants of the Clovis people no longer exist, or can no longer be identified, then nobody owns that parcel of land, absent arbitrary ruling by the US Government, acting under their authority as 'most heavily armed, don't fuck with us'.

I don't have an answer, except to say that any answer is bound to be unfair to a lot of people. There is no fair solution; nor is there any universal moral principle that we can all agree should form the basis of a settlement for disputes. If the land belongs to the descendants of the earliest owner whose claim can be proven, and who has living heirs, then that's just an incentive for genocide. Not much more than two hundred years ago, the land around Sydney cove was the property of the Cadigal clan of the Eora people. Today it is the most valuable real estate in Australia, and amongst the most valuable in the world. The present owners are unlikely to give it all back. Their predecessors did the best job they could of eradicating the Cadigals, in no small part as an attempt to forestall any such claim.

 

[Metaphor]

Most people don't want to be the bad guy. Even more don't want to believe their life is in anyway better because of something bad.

Badness must always lead to more badness. Although I don't consider myself to be a racist, I do consider myself to be a realist. I know my life which has led me to become a middle aged southern white man has many times been made easier by the racism of other people.

Except, of course, that that is the exact opposite of the truth.

You didn’t benefit from racism. Nobody benefits. Some people are harmed more than others. Your life is worse than it otherwise would have been if nobody had ever been racist.
It still staggers me how easily people will toss this unexamined belief out - -that racism benefits certain groups in society. I do not benefit from people being racist.

It is economically and morally impossible for there to be a benefit.

 

[Bronzeage]

Most people don't want to be the bad guy. Even more don't want to believe their life is in anyway better because of something bad.

Badness must always lead to more badness. Although I don't consider myself to be a racist, I do consider myself to be a realist. I know my life which has led me to become a middle aged southern white man has many times been made easier by the racism of other people.

Except, of course, that that is the exact opposite of the truth.

You didn’t benefit from racism. Nobody benefits. Some people are harmed more than others. Your life is worse than it otherwise would have been if nobody had ever been racist.
It still staggers me how easily people will toss this unexamined belief out - -that racism benefits certain groups in society. I do not benefit from people being racist.

It is economically and morally impossible for there to be a benefit.

Nope. I benefited from racism. I have taken jobs and been paid more for my work because I was white. I was aware of it and took full advantage. It bothered me a little, so we might attach a negative cost to offset my benefit, but when the accounting was done, I came out ahead.

The accounting of opportunity costs of a racism free society is and interesting concept, but claiming I was a victim of society because there was an aggregate mis-justice, just doesn't ring true.

 

[bilby]

Most people don't want to be the bad guy. Even more don't want to believe their life is in anyway better because of something bad.

Badness must always lead to more badness. Although I don't consider myself to be a racist, I do consider myself to be a realist. I know my life which has led me to become a middle aged southern white man has many times been made easier by the racism of other people.

Except, of course, that that is the exact opposite of the truth.

You didn’t benefit from racism. Nobody benefits. Some people are harmed more than others. Your life is worse than it otherwise would have been if nobody had ever been racist.
It still staggers me how easily people will toss this unexamined belief out - -that racism benefits certain groups in society. I do not benefit from people being racist.

It is economically and morally impossible for there to be a benefit.

Impossible? No.

I am executor of an estate, and have a million dollars to give out. The will specifies a bunch of people chosen at random, many of whom are now deceased, and the pool of recipients is now down to you and Ernie Dingo; I am supposed to give half to each of you. If I am racist, and conceal from Ernie that he is entitled to a share, you get the lot.

If you get a half million dollars more than you are entitled to, then you have benefited from my racism.

Of course, that is an unlikely scenario; but what happens if you are the second best candidate for a job; and the best candidate is passed over because he is black? The net effect on the employer is negative; and the effect on the ignored candidate is sharply negative. But the effect on you is positive - as a result of somebody else's racism. You can easily benefit from racism in ways you may not be aware of at all.

 

[Metaphor]

Nope. I benefited from racism. I have taken jobs and been paid more for my work because I was white.

No, other people may have been paid less because of racism but you were not paid more, unless it was literally charity. (I have had bosses of all ethnic origins and I guarantee you having a matching skin colour did not cause them to pay me more).

I was aware of it and took full advantage. It bothered me a little, so we might attach a negative cost to offset my benefit, but when the accounting was done, I came out ahead.

The accounting of opportunity costs of a racism free society is and interesting concept, but claiming I was a victim of society because there was an aggregate mis-justice, just doesn't ring true.

The GDP in the US would have been higher but for the racism of the past. Therefore, GDP is lower than it otherwise would have been because of racism. Do you think it benefits you to live in a country with a lower GDP than a higher GDP? I guarantee you, it does not.

More people are reliant on government welfare than there would be but for the racism. Therefore, more tax revenue goes to welfare than would go there if nobody had ever been racist. Do you think this benefits you? I guarantee you, it does not.

Racism makes everyone worse off in the aggregate.

 

[Metaphor]

Impossible? No.

In the aggregate, yes. No society can benefit from racism overall, and that includes the people who are racist and power holders.

I am executor of an estate, and have a million dollars to give out. The will specifies a bunch of people chosen at random, many of whom are now deceased, and the pool of recipients is now down to you and Ernie Dingo; I am supposed to give half to each of you. If I am racist, and conceal from Ernie that he is entitled to a share, you get the lot.

If you get a half million dollars more than you are entitled to, then you have benefited from my racism.

Of course, any individual act of racism can benefit someone, but in the aggregate the acts harm everyone.

Of course, that is an unlikely scenario; but what happens if you are the second best candidate for a job; and the best candidate is passed over because he is black? The net effect on the employer is negative; and the effect on the ignored candidate is sharply negative. But the effect on you is positive - as a result of somebody else's racism. You can easily benefit from racism in ways you may not be aware of at all.

The net benefit to me from that particular job offer is positive, but your scenario entails that I also live in a society where other best candidates have been passed over due to racism, and therefore the entire economy is worse than it could have been.

The analogy for racism needs to change. If all white people lost a finger, and all black people lost an arm, everyone is worse off, even though white people are less worse off than black people.

I do not benefit overall from a racist society, and I am poorer now than I would have been had nobody ever been racist.

 

[Bronzeage]

No, other people may have been paid less because of racism but you were not paid more, unless it was literally charity. (I have had bosses of all ethnic origins and I guarantee you having a matching skin colour did not cause them to pay me more).

I was aware of it and took full advantage. It bothered me a little, so we might attach a negative cost to offset my benefit, but when the accounting was done, I came out ahead.

The accounting of opportunity costs of a racism free society is and interesting concept, but claiming I was a victim of society because there was an aggregate mis-justice, just doesn't ring true.

The GDP in the US would have been higher but for the racism of the past. Therefore, GDP is lower than it otherwise would have been because of racism. Do you think it benefits you to live in a country with a lower GDP than a higher GDP? I guarantee you, it does not.

More people are reliant on government welfare than there would be but for the racism. Therefore, more tax revenue goes to welfare than would go there if nobody had ever been racist. Do you think this benefits you? I guarantee you, it does not.

Racism makes everyone worse off in the aggregate.

If the standard of truth is how closely your experience matches mine, you will find little truth in this world.

I am sure this would be a better world, if there was no racism. Since this is not the case, when the accounting is done, society as a whole may have been less than it was, but with every average, and every mean, there will be higher values and lower values. It's likely my benefits of racism lifted me higher than the mean of a properly constructed society.

Whichever the case, I don't have illusions that it never happened.

 

[Togo]

Kahn was genetically engineered. He could appear to be any colour or racial type.