Social definitions of racism

The discussion about the meaning of the term “racist” has been interesting. I can feel that when most of you guys use the term, it pretty much means “dishonest negative comments about other ethnic groups.” I understand that definition, but considering that almost everyone thinks their own opinions are correct, it isn’t particularly useful: the defense to saying anything negative is “it’s true.” So what’s going on is that you have opposing forces. For the sake of convenience, let’s talk about white and black, although this stuff goes for sexism, cultural elitism, and perceptions of and by Asians as well.

In my mind, this is what happened: there is a natural human tendency to say “my group is the best.” And another to blame the victim after we mug him (“he was stupid to wear that watch in this neighborhood”) or rape her (“she asked for it.”)

Slavery was an economic institution (using human beings as machinery) that had serious off-the-books advantages (the creation of a permanent underclass makes possible a permanent aristocracy. White women in the 18th Century weren’t supposed to be lusty sexual animals…but black women were available. Lower-class whites had someone who was even lower).

Because America considers itself a Christian nation, and the core of Christianity is “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” and slavery was considered valuable not just financially but socially, there was a need to justify the economic necessity. So far as I can see from my own research, the most common justification was “blacks are natural slaves.”

Post-slavery, the most FORMAL barriers against blacks dropped, replaced by a gigantic number of relatively informal institutions designed to keep them in their lower status. In addition (and this is what I think the worst side-effect of slavery was) the belief systems designed to justify slavery outlived the institution.

Now you have an interesting situation: millions of people clearly labeled inferior denied the rooting necessary to build a culture, surrounded 10-to-1 by the “Other” who clings to a belief in their inferiority, and have total control of the mechanisms that create education, health care, employment opportunities, housing opportunities, etc.

Life and death. Now, over the years, one click at a time, things get better (although I would take the position that there was never a moment in which there was an advantage even minutely equivilent to the disadvantages. Without that, the chances of “catching up” as a group would be pretty slim. Blacks would have to be SUPERIOR to whites to do so, given the situation.)

Now, then. Through the entire time, blacks have had to hear X percentage of white people making negative comments in every single medium, and in every situation. And they were always supposed to grin and bear it. And some of the comments were pretty pervasively vicious. And we knew very well from our exclusion in media (or the way we were treated when we were present in such media) what White audiences thought of us.

Now…came the 60’s, and the national media was filled with images of black civil rights marchers set upon by dogs, and black civil rights leaders shot dead. A huge backlash of white guilt (“this isn’t the country I love!”) rolled in.

And with it, a push of “political correctness” from what I call the Left. Remember that I think that the Right tends to be more hierarchical, the Left more egalitarian. Both extremes are diseased. But whereas before the set-point assumption was black inferiority (“but we should be nice to them”) the set-point now was black equality. We became very very careful about what we said.

Now…I hate to put it this way, but 100% of the people I have heard complain about “political correctness” are members of the groups that exploited or oppressed. In other words, men complain about “political correctness” dealing with sexism. Whites complain about “political correctness” dealing with blacks. Straights complain about “political correctness” dealing with gays. Christians about “political correctness” dealing with non-Christian minorities, and so on. Never heard the opposite.

What does this imply to me? We LOVE being able to rank others. It is a natural human behavior, and when we find ourselves limited in our self-serving expression, we get ticked off. No one complains that they aren’t allowed to say NICE things about other people.

And saying (for instance) “blacks have greater natural ability at sports” would, in a culture that gave equal weight to body, mind, and spirit, be equivilient to saying “whites are smarter.” But we DON’T give equal weight. Check the obesity stats. So when someone disingenuously says that “well, what’s wrong with saying whites are smarter? I also say that blacks are more athletic” they know, without admitting that they know, that they have just said “whites have more of the most desirable human characteristics.” And it ticks me off when people (in my mind) pretend not to understand what they’ve just said.

Of course, that could be deconstructed further: “according to tests created, administered, and interpreted by group X, group Y is on the average inferior.” Can one understand why a member of group Y would get sick of hearing this?

So when social things shift, and blacks found themselves with enough social, legal, and political power, they enjoyed using it. And whites who sympathized with us cooperated. And to a degree, the entire culture decided that certain kinds of speech would not be used.

It that a hinderance to rapid flow of information and social discourse? To a degree, yes, any inhibition of honest opinion is such a hinderance. And that is regrettable. But since we will NEVER come to what all agree to be a perfect balance of censorship and self-expression on this issue, on which side should we err?

I suggest to you that in the vast majority of cases, the only ones who believe we should err on the side of freedom of expression are those who feel they would benefit from it. And in the vast majority of cases, that would be men on issues of sexism, straights on issues of homophobia, whites on issues of race.

That natural human need to “rank” is strong. When I’m around black folks, and they start talking about the Natural Superiority of black athletes (or whatever) I have to sigh and get ready for odd looks. And when I’m around white friends and they ask “what’s wrong with telling the truth…” I could get all existential and say that there is no ultimate truth perceivable by human beings, just opinions with varying levels of support.

That’s how we got to the point where the word “racist” which denotatively means to ascribe negative characteristics on the basis of genetics, has connotatively come to mean a bad and dishonest person. Unfortunate, but just the pendulum swinging back the other way after 400 years of whites being able to say any damned thing they wanted, and have full social support for it.

I’m sure the straight-jacket pinches a bit. But it is an utterly insignificant fraction of the “pinch” my side felt, folks.
Unless there was a Cosmic Judge prepared to come down and set things straight, all we have is fallible human logic and emotion. We’re doing the best we can, and sometimes we do it clumsily. And when America is browner, and brown-skinned people outnumber whites, and the language begins to be shaped by racist comments that go back the other way, with the legal, political, economic and social power to back it up…we’ll see if whites can be as sanguine about the insults as they seem to expect blacks to be. Is it fair? HELL, NO! But is it MORE fair than it used to be? I would say absolutely yes.