"Race" Face
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Patterico has been driving a fascinating series of blogposts — including two of mine, in my cacapity (sorry, it’s after 2:00 pm, and I’ve had a three or four) capacity as a former guest blogger who still has blogging privileges on Patterico’s Pontifications — on the subject of racism. I find this not merely worth reading but utterly fundamental to any discussion of politics or cultural comparisons… because racism cuts to the quick of whether we see persons as individuals or as merely infinitesmial cogs in the giant machinery of State.
Big Lizards apple martini (not an “appletini,” an appellation that makes us gag):
- One shot of Skyy vodka (unflavored);
- Three squirts of lime juice;
- Five shots of Dekuyper sour apple schnapps.
- Drink while watching (a) an original Perry Mason episode; (b) a “Thin Man” movie with William Powell and Myrna Loy, or (c) an episode of Dancing With the Stars or So You Think You Can Dance.
Patterico’s most recent “racism” entry is this, wherein he quotes a table-pounding assertion by blogger Beldar — who I love like a sister… brother, whatever — as if it were written on the wall by a giant finger… mene mene tekel upharsin!
Anyone of any race who denies having ever had racist thoughts is a liar. Anyone who expects us to believe that he or she has never had racist thoughts is a fool.
With all due respect (which translates to “I’m about to make a pompous ass of myself by contradicting my betters) to one of my favorite bloggers, who I have never met (though I would love to take him to sushi in Houston), this abstracted and overly symmetrical homily is a load of sea cucumber *.
Big Lizards ordinary extraordinary gin martini:
- Fill a cocktail shaker with ice;
- Pour in a shot of vermouth;
- Shake vigorously;
- Pour the vermouth out and down the drain… you don’t need it, it’s just a condiment;
- Pour a shot of Citadelle gin into the shaker;
- Shake vigorously; the gin will pick up the slight flavor of the coating of vermouth from steps 2 and 3;
- Pour into a martini glass;
- Add three or four Tabasco peppers on a toothpick;
- Drink while listening to 1970s progrock… King Crimson, Yes, ELP, Jethro Tull (especially Songs From the Wood — that kind of music. You know what I mean.)
- For a burst of flavor, eat the peppers while the alcohol still swirls around your mouth.
What is a “racist thought?” It must surely be a thought that is racist… that is, a thought that betrays a belief that at least one race is implicitly “superior” to at least one other race. Oh, wait; let me clarify some terms, so that we’re all speaking the same language:
Racist: A person who believes some races are cosmically inferior to others.
Racial bigot: A person who dislikes people because they belong to a particular race.
Racialist: A person who thinks race is always a person’s most important characteristic.
Racial separatist: A person advocating a separation of the races.
Racial supremicist: A person who believes one race should rule over the others.
Racial discrimination: Treating a person differently because of his race. …Distinct words for distinct concepts.
It’s important we all use by and large the same language: A person can be a racial separatist without being a racial supremicist (Randy Weaver, for example), or he can be a racial bigot without being a racist, or he can be a racist but not engage in racial discrimination.
More often if he’s one, he’s the other; but the terms are not synonyms.
It’s important to define your terms, as Ayn Rand insisted. (I’m not a Randroid, by the way; I think she was an interesting but not compelling philosopher, and her misunderstanding of mathematical logic was of the towering, epic class. But she was right on this specific point of defining terms; trust me.)
Taking this definition as our lodestone, a “racist thought” is a thought that directly states, or at least presupposes, that (to simplify) race A is inherently superior to race B. But there exist people in the world (I’m one of them) who believe that “race” is an artificial, artifactual construct with no corresponding physical reality. That is, many of us believe that race is simply an external characteristic that is applied retroactively to humans on the basis of superficial and meaningless biophysical morphologies.
Therefore, it would be intellectually impossible for me to have a “racist thought”: It would be like accusing me of believing that one astrological sign was inherently superior to another. I don’t believe in astrology, I reject the physical existence of astrological signs — not just rhetorically but in my very being; so how could I imagine that Libra, my own sign, was superior or inferior to Sagittarius, Sachi’s sign? I don’t even believe that zodiacal signs mean anything at all, other than the ability of humans to look at a cloud and see a horsey, a ducky — or a scales or archer.
Similarly, I don’t look at a black man and see a different subspecies; I simply see someone who occupies a particular point on an n-dimensional graph of physical characteristics… facial features, hue, height, build, and so forth. I don’t see a “black” — I see an individual who is darker than I, probably taller, has a particular shaped nose, etc.
Beldar’s projections from his own programming, having grown up in the South, are meaningless to me; I don’t see “races,” so how could I see one race as superior or inferior to another? He can recline on his couch and make lordly pronouncements that everyone harbors racist thoughts; but he’s simply generalizing from the particular to the universal… and doing it badly.
I could no more think that blacks were inferior to whites than I could think that people with yellow hair (”blonds”) were inherently stupid compared to people with brown hair (”brunets”)… or that libras were smarter than sagittariuses.
Now to Patterico. My friend and former blogboss asserts the following astounding claim:
Beldar makes two very important points: 1) “making a racist comment does not mean you are a racist,” and 2) “you need not “intend” to be racist to be racist.”
As for the first point, that is why I was careful to say that I was not calling R.S. McCain a racist….
As to point 2), there are just a lot of instances where it just makes no sense to say you “intended” racism.
The first paraphrase from the first paragraph simply plays with definitions; the second is demonstrably false. Point 1:
- The most logical and obvious definition of a racist is a person who harbors racist beliefs.
- A racist belief is one that assumes, explicitly or implicitly, that one race is superior to another.
- Anyone who believes that one race is superior to another is, by definition, a racist.
- Ergo, anyone who intentionally makes a racist statement is, again by definition, either a racist (if he is honest) or a mendacious liar (if he doesn’t really believe what he says)… because he intentionally stated — that is, trying to make people believe — that one race is superior to another.
So what about the second point; what does it mean to say that one “intends to be racist?” Again, I think it clear that, because racist means “believ[ing] some races are cosmically inferior to others,” making any statement that is racist — implying or explicitly stating that one race is inferior to others — one must either believe what one has said, which means one has been racist… or else one doesn’t believe what one has said, which means one was telling a deliberate falsehood.
On the second prong of the fork, there are only two reasons one might say something racist without really meaning it: Either you are deliberately playing on the latent racism of some listener, hoping to mislead him into a racist belief… or else your statement was never intended to be believed in the first place. For an example of the latter, consider Carroll O’Connor, playing Archie Bunker in a teleplay, making racist comments in a conscious effort to make his character seem repugnant and reprehensible.
Other than such satirical or pedantic pronouncements, it’s hard to think of an instance in which one would utter a racist comment without intending to utter a racist comment. However, I can think of many instances in which one would intentionally utter a racist comment — but not realize there was anything wrong with such racism… which I think is what Beldar and Patterico mistake for not “intentionally” being racist.
But an analogy makes clear that this is rhetorical error. The analogy is a person who kills a rival or object of hatred, not realizing there is anything wrong with doing so. Can he still be convicted of murder? Of course he can! For murder, one must only have the intention to kill a person, in a situation not allowed by law; there is no requirement that one realize that such killing is wrong… only that he realizes that he is killing a person, and that killing a person is against the law.
Otherwise, you could not convict, say, a Sicilian who believes that it’s perfectly acceptable to kill the brother of a person who wronged him. Evviva la vendetta!
For a racist statement to be intentional, I only must show that the speaker intended to state that one race is inferior to another… not that he understands that non-racists reject such categorizations. Thus, David Duke may think there is nothing wrong in saying that blacks are inferior to whites; but his ignorance or paleolithic opinons don’t exonerate him from the proper charge of racism.
So the only way to make a racist statement without being racist… is to state the idea that one race is inferior to another without any desire to advance that idea. In other words, to dishonestly (for entertainment or perversity) say something you don’t really believe, even for a moment… like if, in response to an attack by some liberal, I were to say ironically, “Oh yes, I think blondes are all stupid.”
So other than obvious instances of irony, playacting, or mendacious instances of misleading, when a person makes a racist comment, it clearly implies that he harbors racist thoughts… hence is a racist.
Sorry, my friends; but the Beldar/Patterico thesis that one can utter unconscious racism without having any racist thought is a risible humbug.
There; who says alcohol addles the mind? God, I wish I had some LSD. Haven’t had a microgram in twenty years. Yeesh. (All right, all right, don’t panic; everything is back to norble.)
* Sea cucumber is the most vile, disgusting, emetic “food” animal; it is eaten only by deranged individuals, in restaurants that cater to the mentally condemned. It’s the same phylum as a sea star (a.k.a., a starfish); anybody who would voluntarily eat an echinoderm like a sea star, desperately needs psychiatric counseling. (Exceptional dispensation is offered for the roe of sea urchins, which is heavenly… though not the sea urchin itself.)
