sarahmichigan | Blogging Against Racism Week

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Blogging Against Racism Week

I've seen it noted in a few places that this is "Blogging Against Racism Week."

Of course, I think Racism is Bad. And I can come up with a fistful of personal anecdotes as well as statistics to counter anyone who says that racism is a thing of the past and isn't a problem today.

But there are so many issues where I just don't know what to think. Here are some issues I'm conflicted or confused about:

-Racism and humor. What's the difference between a joke about racism and a racist joke? Who's allowed to make jokes that are racially charged? Should white people lose their jobs over making racist jokes?

-Racism and "The N Word". For the most part, only white people who are rednecks (yes, I know this is a racially charged word as well- I come from redneck stock and think I'm allowed to use it) or blatantly racist use this term with any regularity these days. Should Blacks stop using it as well? Should there be MORE use of it to diffuse the charge of the word, kind of like diffusing other epithets like "bitch" or "slut" or "dyke"?

-How to talk about race. How do we start a dialogue about racism and race without ending up in accusations, shutting people down, and making people feel like they can't talk about it at all?

Maybe some of the blog posts I'll read this week will shed some light on one or more of those issues. I'm not sure if I'll post more about the topic or not; it seems like there are plenty Guilty White Liberals posting about race already.

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Sure, clarification accepted. :)

I'd like to reply to you, but I'm too overwhelmed right now from recent discussions about race.

In the meantime, feel free to post. Don't worry about the glut of White Liberal Guilt- most of that is fake anyhow.

Yes, i was trying to get at this too. There are plenty of laws on the book that I think are pretty reasonable which guide/restrict people's actions without squashing their right to think or say what they want.

I'm feeling overwhelmed by the discussion I just started, so I can only imagine how you're doing with it.

Ironic that my post about not wanting to shut people down or point fingers during discussions of racism is infuriating me to the point that I want to start dropping people (or at least one person) off my FL. Ugh.

Hmmmmm so his choice had a reason rather than just being knee-jerk racism? That's where the conversation gets harder because we are removing his right to run his business to what he sees as his best advantage. Do I agree with him? No, but I do see his logic and while it is discriminatory, I am not as sure that it is racist since he was considering the effect of race rather than dismissing them out of hand as unqualified due to their race.

If someone wants to dig ditches with soup spoons, that's up to him. Deliberately crippling yourself by refusing better tools is short sighted and the markets will respond appropriately. What do we tell people when they are making choices based on their own experience and they are the ones who bear the consequences?

Rofl, I was sooo confused!! Glad I scrolled down before I started trying to figure out how badly I'd misphrased. *grin*

Yeah, I stick to what I personally am going to do. I mean, it's easy to say now that anyone going to their shows KNOWS they're going to hear that kind of racially charged humor - but I wonder if their first few crowds were very tense, or mixed reactions?

Comedy is SO hard because it kind of relies on being outside your comfort zone in some respect just to be funny in the first place.

What I'm trying to say is that he didn't think black sales agents would do well selling in his market, BUT he was also making the assumption that blacks were not part of his target market, which I think *is* racist. There are plenty of affluent African American communities in Michigan, but he never thought to send the black agents there. And his assumptions were racist because he had never hired a black agent, so how the hell would he know they wouldn't do well selling to whites?

Ok. So he was being short-sighted, happens to a lot of businesses, which is why they go under. I think that is an appropriate consequence for bad management.

I agree with your point about it needing to be a conversation rather than a lecture, but there's a difference between debate and argumentativeness. Aside from the fact that a government cannot by looking the other way condone racist hiring/firing policies - the idealogical value of your points hold up a lot better in the free market (freedom to be an idiot and hurt your own business) than they do, say, for universities.

Student A is black and came from a high school with textbooks from 1970. He got a 3.2 GPA and is competing for a scholarship (federal funds, mind you) with Student B. Being white, Student B grew up in a school district with a much higher level of tax funding, enjoyed new classrooms, small class sizes, new books, etc. Student B had a GPA of 3.3

Who do you think worked harder for that GPA? There are a lot of generalizations here, but seriously - do you think that tax funding has nothing to do with scholastic performance? What we're talking about with this scholarship is making up at a federal level for what the student did NOT receive at a local level.

Let's just be blunt about it. IN GENERAL, the black kid is going to grow up in a more crowded, less well-funded school because his parents don't have high paying jobs. His parents live in a less-well-to-do school district because - many generations ago - their ancestors were slaves and had no money. It takes a lot of time to build up family wealth. White kids IN GENERAL start from an advantage and don't STATISTICALLY need the grant/scholarship money as much.

Individual exceptions? Sure. But federal policy has nothing to do with individual cases and everything to do with trends. Reversing negative ones. Promoting positive ones. Making the country better, not for you individually, but for you generally.

That's what EO programs mean to me. And I don't think we're anywhere NEAR being ready to drop them because "everything's just fine now".

Well said.

My original point for bringing it up wasn't about EEO or Affirmative Action but just to say that racism is alive and well today. Some folks want to believe it's an artifact of the past, but it isn't.

Here (http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/39309975/m/814004836831/p/1).

If you want the abridged version, watch the video trailer (high-quality (http://www.gametrailers.com/player/22800.html), or low-quality (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILuP43jcaXw)) and then start with my views (http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/39309975/m/814004836831?r=287004456831#287004456831) on page three of the discussion.

I think making fine adjustment to a wristwatch with a meat axe is poor policy but that is the only implement government intervention has.

As far as GPA goes, it isn't really relevant anymore. I used to work in admissions in 2 different universities and I had more than a few applications come in with 3.9 GPAs that were filled out at sub-literate level. Clearly, this kid will get in and just as clearly, will get destroyed by the standards of the school. As such, I don't think GPA are a means of comparison.

As far as the rest of it goes, its the same problem I had mentioned before. Skewing the field to favor one group does a disservice to all the people who wind up playing.

It occurs to me that if I keep writing on this, I am simply going to get myself in more trouble.

So...

We disagree. I don't believe anything is made fair by making it unequal in someone's favor. I think doing so robs people of the ability to accomplish and the dignity of competing as an equal.

Oh, good lord. Will we ever stop talking *past* one another and ever talk *to* one another? It seems in that discussion, a lot of it (I'm thinking of the Hoyle dude, particularly) are not reading closely and are responding to what they *think* people are saying instead of what people are actually saying.

*sigh*

Personally, I can deal with the libertarian argument against AA that "discrimination is discrimination, so don't do it." I can accept that perhaps AA is not the best instrument to deal with a real problem.

I don't agree with the position that there isn't a problem in need of fixing or that situations in the workplace and education aren't still skewed against most racial minorities, though.

Using most definitions of "isms," reverse racism is not actually a fact.

The way we describe in it sociology is that there is prejudice, which is someones thoughts, there is discrimination, which is actively doing something discriminatory, and there is racism, which is an institutional power.

There are two great books out there. The first is "Racism without Racists" by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva. He describes how people perpetuate racist thoughts without thinking that they are "racist." The second is "Silent Racism" by Barbara Trepagnier, which states that everyone is racist, and people just need to learn what they can to try to minimize the institutional impact.

Until people can actually listen to one another, nothing will be acomplished. And, until people realize that racism is truely institutional, nothing will be done.

Well, my own experience is that talking to white people about racism gets like that frequently and rapidly.

Plus, there are the occasional bonus experiences of having people you trusted bust out with the most surprising nastiness when you least expected it.

Like the one who assumed that rape was "more accepted" in black communities.
Or the one who basically figured that black people were (all!) just crying wolf about racism, because, you know, she didn't see any.
Or the many who assume that any reference to racism constituted calling HER racist.

It's horrible, absolutely horrible.

In that respect, we actually agree. AA is a bad idea.

I didn't say there isn't a problem. I think that problems that currently exist are better dealt with on a case by case basis rather than trying to legislate a belief system. Real problems still exist but I don't think the currently policies address it appropriately nor do I think that they really can address it appropriately.

I'm sorry to hear it.

I have people say to me (here on LJ and fairly recently) that the new generation isn't racist, that once the old people like their grandparents die off, racism will be gone. Uh, yeah right.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/4/14/115441/195

"Not one white guy would change places with me...and I'm Rich. There's a white bus boy backstage with one arm and one leg and he'd say, nah, I'd like to see how this white thing pans out." - Chris Rock

Or the many who assume that any reference to racism constituted calling HER racist.

That brings up something I've noticed in discussions on any similar society-wide disparity to racism -- sexism, or many discussions of rape regarding the power imbalance... for me (white male), sometimes the discussions start to feel like "all {whites|males} do this..." (a few times they actually explicitly go that way). I have to fight a knee-jerk defensiveness.

And sometimes there's a discussion of some subtle aspect of sexism or racism, and I feel that defensiveness that's more the "holy shit, I probably DO that once in a while, they're RIGHT." Last time I remember having that feeling was -- I don't even remember now in what forum I saw this mentioned, but a black man was saying something to the effect of, "why is it that every white man who has a conversation with me has to throw 'man' in the first sentence?" (like "hey, man, can you help me over here?") I don't think I always did that, and there are times I did that with white men too, but I'm sure I did that more often if the person I was talking to was black). Then I felt that guilty "yeah, I never realized -- how stupid of me," ... but then I stopped doing it.

One thing that feels in its infancy about sexism or racism is that the discussion is pressured against talking about any differences. We so have to pretend they don't exist (and maybe that's what's needed as a society about these things for now anyway). When you're first educating a child, you give them much broader rules that as they grow have nuances and exceptions.

What if that coach years ago was right, that black men *statistically* tend to have a slightly different musculature that enables them to {do some aspect of something to do with football I think it was, better} (I'm hoping someone with a better memory than I tend to regarding things sportslike can help me fill that in more accurately)? We pretty much can't have that conversation as a society right now.

I think what it is, is that if differences are acknowledged, they can be misused as reasons to make value judgments and discriminate ("ummm, I dunno, we can't go hiring black men for this job, as with their statistically larger muscles, we'll need to on the average buy larger uniform sizes that cost more" -- ok very contrived example but I hope it's illustrative).

Also, sometimes we walk a tightrope -- some women get severe PMS for example. So do we ignore that? Or do we pay attention to it, and then risk some people's dismissal of every woman's strong emotional point of view as "she must be PMSing"?

I'm hopeful of someday a society where we can acknowledge the legitimate differences between any groups of people, and yet not misuse them.

It's one of those things where, after awhile, you really stop caring about people's good intentions.

The first time someone steps on your toe, it's all cool. When it happens again, immediately, it's irritating. When it happens again right away, you don't care much whether they're clumsy, inconsiderate, malicious or ill, you just want them to stay off your %$@#* feet!

I've seen that puzzle clueless whitefolk (as distinct from 'all whitefolk') time and time again. "Why so hostile? I didn't mean anything?"

{Sigh}

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