Mary Anne Mohanraj, guest posting at Scalzi.com, writes a very clear and well-organized “racism 101” post:
Nalo Hopkinson, a wonderful SF/F writer whose work I recommend to you, put this pithily in my blog comments when she said, “…many in the science fiction community — like many in all kinds of other communities — lack an understanding of racism as a system. It’s pretty tough to live in a system and be unaffected by it. That’s like floating in a pool of shit and claiming that you don’t smell. So whenever you have the urge to silence people by shouting, “I’m not racist!” it’s probably a good idea to take a long, hard think and ask yourself how in the world is that possible? Really, it isn’t. Not until a whole lot more about the world changes.”
That’s a starting assumption for me — the world is racist, the culture I grew up in is racist, I’ve internalized and carry around a hell of a lot of racist baggage, and on some deep level, many of my basic assumptions are racist. So are yours. That sucks. But I also don’t feel particularly guilty about it, and neither should you. It’s something you’ve inherited, living in this world. The onus now on you isn’t to wallow in guilt — it’s to be aware of these deep-buried attitudes, and consciously try to avoid letting them dictate your choices in life.
Her entire post is well worth reading — one of the better “racism 101” posts I’ve read. It’s addressed to people in the science fiction/fantasy community (both fans and writers), but I think anyone interested in how discussions of race function could enjoy reading this post. I also liked her post on why writing characters with identities (racial, ethnic, gender, sexual, etc) is not only good politics, but necessary for good writing.
It’s pretty tough to live in a system and be unaffected by it. That’s like floating in a pool of shit and claiming that you don’t smell.
And yet that’s the claim that was made regarding now-President Obama when people looked askance at the incredibly corrupt government and political organizations that he was part of in Illinois.
Gee RonF, couldn’t wait for even one other comment to be made before you completely changed the topic?
Nice excerpt Amp, now I’m off to read her whole post.
It took me a minute to find the post, since it’s linked above only in the word “at.”
For everyone else, here it is:
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2009/03/12/mary-ann-mohanraj-gets-you-up-to-speed-part-i/
link to the post in question
[Oops! Thanks, SM! I’ve fixed the post now. –Amp]
I’m only just at the beginning of the post, but I amalready living it:
OMG, this is what I am always begging for–definitions–and someone actually did it! I am so psyched! It makes her piece about 10,000% easier to read, because i don’t constantly have to wonder which definition she is using, or what she means. Yay!
[sighs happily and goes back to reading.]
Oooo, I’m especially liking the links to list of authors of color towards the end of that fabulous piece. I’ve done really well with the gender split of authors in the books I own these past few years but I admit my bookshelves are still probably 95% white. I’ll definitely keep those lists handy for the next time I go on a book buying binge.
Ali: Start with Salt Roads, by Nalo Hopkinson. Seriously. One of the best books I’ve ever read.
(I’m assuming you’ve already read Morrison and Butler.)
My point being that the argument seems therefore to be based on a proposition that neither the people making the argument and the people accepting the argument have accepted in other settings. It seems to me to shoot a hole in the argument.
So for this piece, please understand that I generally use the definition of racism that argues that in the world we currently live in, everyone’s racist,
I don’t understand how saying “everyone is racist” comprises a definition of racism. I can see where it describes the author’s belief of how widespread racism is (regardless of whether or not I accept that belief), but not how it defines racism in the first place.
Ron, from an anthropological standpoint, your comment is just ignorant. There’s a difference between cultural hegemony and norms that exist within transitory subcultures. It’s unreasonable, and should be transparently so, to compare the effects of American, post-enlightenment Western cultural biases and the effects of a subculture that people are exposed to only within the course of a job that they enter as adults and can voluntarily leave.
You might consider reading an anthro 101 text book, although try to find one that’s not romantic about cultural relativism.
I may spontaneously combust from this, but I agree with RonF.
If everyone is racist, then no one is. It becomes a null term, useless for distinguishing people or viewpoints, or being really descriptive at all. But then, I’m running out the door and am shooting my mouth off before reading the article. (I suppose I can understand how it’s useful in an attempt to stave off an endless chorus of “But I’m not racist!”. But that’s useful, not accurate.)
Grendelkahn: Everyone within Western culture carries some of the biases of racism with them, as a product of colonialism and racism that have existed in our cultures for a long time. Surely traits held in common by some of the world’s people, due to historical factors, do not become a “null set,” even if you’re only talking to other Westerners.
Also, everyone is racist, but to different degrees.
I suspect I’m going to have to fuck off from this post, because I can deal with 101 questions, but not if they’re posed as gotchas. Take it from someone who’s taken anthropology 102-210, people aren’t just talking out of their asses when they make 101 statements. If you don’t understand something, you probably just don’t understand it. It’s not that it was stated completely out of the blue.
(And yeah, Grendel, I appreciate that you were upfront about shooting your mouth off on your way out the door, and that you probably don’t believe sociologists/anthropologists are just making crap up because they’re bored. Ron just eroded about 90% of my patience.)
It’s more like the statement “every human adult has a language.” Saying that doesn’t create “a null term,” because there’s still a lot of shades of distinction to be made within the statement “has a language.” Some people speak French, some Farsi, some Sign; some people write beautiful prose for a living, others have trouble expressing themselves at all, etc.. We can discuss the science of how people acquire language, and we can talk about the politics of language (“A language is a dialect with an army and a navy.”)
We’re just eliminating “I don’t have any language!,” or discussions of who has language and who does not, from the conversation. That’s useful, as you say, but I’d argue it’s also 99% accurate.
Also, everyone is racist, but to different degrees.
It had to be linked.
Thanks for the suggestion Mandolin. And you assume correctly, although the only reason I’ve read Butler is because of a certain well meaning friend who keeps on pushing sci-fi on me even though I’ve stated repeatedly it’s not my favorite genre :) (I did end up liking Butler though)
Well, there’s 99% of science fiction, and then there’s OCTAVIA BUTLER (name to be read with a halo, and sound of a choir of angels singing). And I say this as a SF fan. ;)
ha! I’ll be sure to keep that in mind the next time I read something of hers.
Now that I’ve read enough of these posts that I think I understand the basics of what’s going on, I’m from this point forth quite willing to actually be responsible for what I write, and since I shot my mouth off earlier, I owe something a little more thoughtful.
I don’t have a problem with that statement. The idea that we’re all carrying the race meme is fairly obvious, and doesn’t imply some sort of moral equivalence that lets people throw up their hands and say that, well, if everyone is racist, etc. Which is why I should have read the linked post, which makes it very clear that this is the idea, instead of just riffing on someone else’s comments, Slashdot-style. RTFA, indeed.
Well, you’re not alone. As Seeking Avalon put it at the end of the timeline, “The conversation in my journal is […] a doctorate level conversation […] I’m done talking to the freshman, sophomores, juniors and seniors. Come back when you’re ready to tackle a Masters and maybe I won’t find you quite so clueless.”
Anyway, it looks like there’s been a lot of people cluelessly shooting their mouths off, which means there’s too much talking (posting) and not enough listening (reading). (I’ve continued that brave tradition above.) But not becoming involved in the conversation is an expression of privilege. (I can just ignore it!) But commenting is an expression of privilege. (I can make it all about me!) And this little kvetchlet is itself an expression of privilege, because I’m focusing on myself–a natural reaction, I suppose, but certainly not a helpful one when the issue isn’t about me. I may disappear in a light blue puff of logic as a consequence of all the self-reference.
This all reminds me of why I don’t comment in radical feminist spaces. (I restrict myself to the fun kind!) I have just enough self-awareness to know that anything I say is going to, in some sense, be making it All About Me, and the forum in question is a place which is, in constrast to everywhere else, not All About Me.
On the listening side, there’s nothing quite like reading one post, thinking that there’s nothing particularly wrong with it, and then reading a follow-up post pointing out the privilege to drive home just how faulty my own judgment is, how densely packed my own invisible knapsack remains, especially when I think I’ve got a slightly broader perspective. Things that are obvious to other people are invisible to me. It’s all very “Are my pants on backward? Am I on fire?!”.
I wonder how much of the problem is the concept that some people have special access to knowledge that other people don’t–what I mentioned in the last paragraph above. For people who are used to forcefully backing up their opinions and beliefs, it’s hard to admit that one’s critical faculties have failed, that one is, in this way, blind. To let someone else tell you what your own words meant.
I’m reminded of arguments over standards of evidence in date-rape cases. There’s no actual evidence that this happens, but dudes in one case and white people in the other will recoil in terror, claiming that, well, they could say anything, and I’m giving up my due process rights in one case and critical faculties in the other. Even though there’s no actual evidence that this is a problem (in either case), it’s an analogous concern.
Maybe I’m just restating the obvious, but this strikes me as a common thread through some of the discussions. It’s an idea that’s very, very difficult to get used to, but it’s at the root of a lot of this angst and fighting.
There’s probably a doctorate-level term for this, but I sure as heck don’t know it. It seems like the sort of thing the folks at Overcoming Bias should be all over, but probably aren’t due to their disinterest in questioning privilege. (Robin Hanson, I’m looking at you.)
Ha! Yeah!
I am interested in this particular phenomenon, though. There are many ways to express it: “there are rock guitar players, and then there is JIMI HENDRIX.”
“There are politicians, and then there is BARACK OBAMA.”
The existence of a certain POC in any given field, who is obviously superior to most others, seems to have the opposite effect, almost… it allows people to say “See? No racism!”–when of course they have to be demonstrably superior to even get in the door of such elite white enclaves–OF COURSE they are so much better.
But that seems to work against people of color who are not ***superior***but on the level of most whites in these field(s)–it sets the bar much higher for POC, while serving as hedge against accusations of racism.
(Hope this post made sense! Attempting to bake something and post at the same time!)
Amp:
It’s more like the statement “every human adult has a language.”
Fine. That tells me how widespread language is. But after reading that sentence I know no more about what language is than I did before I read it. It doesn’t define language. So how does “everyone is racist” define what racism is?
Actually, rereading MAM’s post again, Ron is right; strictly speaking, she doesn’t provide a full definition of what “racism” means. She sort of defines what she doesn’t mean by it (not something anyone is totally free of, not power + prejudice), and assumes that virtually everyone who reads her post will know enough to fill in the gaps.
I think that she’s probably correct in that assumption. Still, since it is a racism 101 type essay, an additional sentence or paragraph defining racism in terms of what it is would have been good. She does describe s0me things racism is – racism is picked up from the society around us, racism is present throughout society, etc – but not a full, clear definition.
Is a remark like “Clarence Thomas isn’t really black” racist? Is it racist if made by a black person?
This isn’t a “gotcha.” I’m not a fan of Clarence Thomas. And I’m certainly not trying to make an argument that racism on the part of blacks–even towards other blacks–lets white people off the hook for their racism. I’m just wondering whether this is an example of how racism is so pervasive that we are all capable of racist thoughts and remarks, even sometimes without realizing that they are (or at least can reasonably be perceived to be) racist
If you think about it a bit, “Everyone is racist” – at least to a degree – isn’t all that controversial a statement. Caution and distrust towards people that are different than us or that we are not bound to is part of human nature. In fact, you can probably find examples of this in other species, not just humans. I think that saying “Oh, our racism comes from our society” is perhaps too superficial an analysis. It’s deeper than that.
It’s something that is overcome with education and experience, but the seed of this is something we are all born with. Pointing this out and telling people “This is part of human nature, so don’t get defensive – acknowledge it, understand it, and get past it” seems valid to me.
Except, RonF, that racism patently isn’t just a general anxiety, dislike, or leeriness distributed evenly amongst people of different races. It’s the systemic hatred and oppression of people of color. That’s why it’s source is in society, not in human nature. “Caution and distrust towards people that are different” from oneself is, indeed, a natural human response, but that’s not actually what we’re talking about here.
But that kinda begs the question, right? As far as I can tell, we’re discussing how Mary Anne Mohanraj uses the term “racism” in her Racism 101 discussion. I don’t see where Mohanraj defines racism to mean systemic hatred and oppression of people of color.
Would Mohanraj reject the idea that racism on the part of Native Americans could have played a role in the demise of the Norse colony at Greenland and the English colony at Roanoke, or that racism could play a role in Mugabe’s relationship with white farmers in Zimbabwe?
Nobody.really — I deviated from the article without making it clear. I should have been more explicit about that; RonF was making pronouncements about racism and human nature in general, so I responded with a statement about racism in general. The fact (as has been acknowledged in this thread) is that Mohanraj doesn’t actually define racism.
[edit] removed by author due to cross post rendering it moot.
Sailorman, did you read my response to nobody.really? Once again, I acknowledge that I deviated from the premises of the article without making that explicit. It was a mistake. I apologize. I don’t see what more I can do about it.
(As an aside: “By that definition, which a lot of progressives share, PoC (people of color) can’t be racist, because they don’t have any reinforcement from that institutionalized power.” By that definition, actually, PoC can’t be racist against white people, because by that definition no one can be racist against white people. It doesn’t imply that PoC can’t be racist in general, though, just like gay people can be heterosexist and/or homophobic but there’s no such thing at “homosexism” or “heterophobia.”)
Sorry–as you can see from the timing, we cross posted. I’ll remove my earlier comment as of now. Though incidentally, it was an explanation, and didn’t demand an apology in any case ;)
Sorry–as you can see from the timing, we cross posted. I’ll remove my earlier comment as of now. Though incidentally, it was an explanation, and didn’t demand an apology in any case ;)
Oh crap, didn’t notice the cross-posting! You may not have demanded an apology, but I made a confusing mistake and one was in order anyway.
: )
Except, RonF, that racism patently isn’t just a general anxiety, dislike, or leeriness distributed evenly amongst people of different races. It’s the systemic hatred and oppression of people of color.
I would say that racism is a specific expression – to varying degrees of intensity, feelings and actions – of a subset of the more general overall phenomenon.
That’s why it’s source is in society, not in human nature.
Surely the society or culture you live in will either encourage or discourage racism. It has a role to play, and by changing society in what I at least would consider a favorable direction racism can be diminished, if not eliminated entirely. But the root of racism is deeper than that. A racist individual or a racist group is not inventing something de novo. They are appealing, in a twisted fashion, to something basic, expanding and perverting it to their ends. It seems to me that understanding that is key. I think that attacking racism from the viewpoint that the underlying cause is society and not human nature is missing something essential and will weaken the efficacy of the effort.
I would say that racism is a specific expression – to varying degrees of intensity, feelings and actions – of a subset of the more general overall phenomenon.
Maybe. But IMO this framing severely underplays the unilateral nature of racial oppression. Maybe that’s useful to do sometimes — it may help anti-racist activists reach some white audiences — but it’s also fundamentally inaccurate.
A racist individual or a racist group is not inventing something de novo. They are appealing, in a twisted fashion, to something basic, expanding and perverting it to their ends. It seems to me that understanding that is key. I think that attacking racism from the viewpoint that the underlying cause is society and not human nature is missing something essential and will weaken the efficacy of the effort.
It’s an interesting idea, and I’m curious about others thoughts here, but I’m not really buying it. Fear of the unknown is probably inherent in human nature, but is fear of the different? That’s what you’re postulating, as far as I can tell, and I’m not sure I see the evidence for that.
I think fear and distrust of the different probably is somewhat inherent to human nature. Tribalism/my group vs. everyone else’s groups is pretty old. But I think that line of thinking is not productive in most anti-racist discussions because too many people would like any excuse to throw up their hands and say we’ll never solve this problem so why bother. I also am inclined to think of racist ideology as somewhat reverse engineered – that an ideology that saw blacks as subhuman developed to justify practices that were making some people a lot of money – so I don’t think that our base instincts lead inevitably to the system we have today. That is, it might not be 100 percent in society, but the vast majority of it is.
I guess I disagree with RonF when he says that not naming human nature as the source weakens the effort to fight racism. This can get a bit chicken-and-egg, but it seems to me that if you could reduce systemic inequality, personal racism would go down as well, because we would see people in different groups as less fundamentally different, so that base instinct, that fear or distrust, wouldn’t get triggered. Whereas, with the system we have now, I think you could wave a magic wand and erase personal racism tomorrow and a lot of inequality would continue.
One white guy’s understanding: If we can humbly appraise the limits of human capacities, and the weaknesses of the strategies we use to cope with our limits, it’s remarkable that we’re not more biased than we are.
1. I’m ignorant. I’m looking for more info, but it takes time and effort, and in the meantime life constantly requires me to make decisions on the basis the little info I’ve got. That person walking down the hall toward me might be my significant other or it might be a blood-thirsty rival; any wrong move on my part in either direction will end my ability to pass on my genes to the next generation. Consequently I develop heuristics – rules of thumb to guide my decisions, strategies for squeezing the maximum guidance from whatever info I can get cheap.
One cheap source of info is vision. I can derive some info about you at a safe distance – indications regarding your race, general age, sex, physical bearing, social status, etc. Another cheap source of info is socialization: I can learn about the world based on what other people tell me. And what they’re likely to tell me about is, at least in large part, all the info they’ve picked up cheaply. Consequently I learn to focus on race, etc. – not necessarily because I think it’s the most relevant piece of info, but because it’s info I can get at a glance.
Now, if I had been socialized in a culture with a high degree of “racial” uniformity I might well not focus or “race” as a relevant variable – not because I’d be too high-minded for that, but because race would no longer serve as a cheap basis upon which to draw distinctions among people. In the US we have biases about blondes and redheads. I’m told the Japanese have no such biases about hair color. Now, the Japanese do have variations in hair color, just less than the variations we observe among whites. Thus, while the Japanese are not above prejudice – ask the Koreans – they don’t express prejudice on the basis of hair color; the distinctions are too fine to serve as an efficient group marker.
2. I feel anxious about my inability to guard against unknown threats or exploit unforeseen opportunities. My response to this fact will tend to fall along a continuum. On the one hand, I might become hyper-vigilant. Hyper-vigilance may reduce my chances of being killed by that blood-thirsty rival, but increase my chances of dying of hypertension.
Alternatively I could try denial. Through denial I can imagine that the world is in fact more predictable than evidence would suggest. I imagine that I can detect patterns based on limited data. For example, I might imagine that I can predict lots of things about you based solely on easily-gathered data such as race. Here I’m focusing on race because I want to have greater certainty about you, and race is among the few things I can observe about you.
3. Finally, I have attribution bias. That is, I tend to give the benefit of a doubt to myself and to those with whom I identify, and make harsher assumptions about everyone else. Bad things that are associated with me and people like me are the result of accident or misunderstanding or innocent mistake, see? Whereas bad things associated with other people are a result of their weakness or laziness or carelessness or malice or “nature.” Here I focus on your race as an easily-recognized marker for determining whether you are like me or not, and therefore whether I should extend the benefit of a doubt to you – and vicariously, to myself.
If you combine my constant need to draw conclusions from inadequate info + my psychological need for greater certainty than the evidence allows + attribution bias, and mix well, you get a good running start at most of the “isms,” including racism.
_____
Now, it’s hardly surprising that I like this theory of prejudice: consistent with attribution bias, this theory imputes a minimum of bad motives to me. And it’s hardly surprising that people who feel discriminated against will not care for this theory, and will prefer theories that explain prejudice in terms of my weakness or laziness or carelessness or malice or “nature.” That’s part of the challenge in the discussion: few people in the discussion can claim to be outside observers.
How are the three scenarios you describe above this statement not “nature”?
(I feel like I should clarify what I’m asking you. I agree that the three different scenarios you describe are part of the thought process that a lot of us go through all the time and probably lay the foundation for a general preference for people who are “like us” in whatever way matters to us. And it also seems to me like what you’re describing is part of human nature or part of a very innate way of thinking, but then at the end you contrast the scenarios you describe with “nature” as if “nature” is something different. Your conclusion also seems to me to set up an either/or when it could just as easily be both/and and I would throw in a bunch of other factors on top of the ones you mention. I’m not entirely sure what you’re getting at.)
But IMO this framing severely underplays the unilateral nature of racial oppression.
I was not intending to provide a complete description or definition of racism. I am discussing it’s origin.
But I think that line of thinking is not productive in most anti-racist discussions because too many people would like any excuse to throw up their hands and say we’ll never solve this problem so why bother.
I disagee. Not that some people won’t look for excuses; people look for excuses no matter whether they have a premise to attach to them or not. But I think that it would be easy enough to point out examples of other feelings/instincts/etc. that are part of human nature that we are expected to control and overcome. The fact that some people might try to use it as an excuse does not make it untrue or not useful to account for.
I also am inclined to think of racist ideology as somewhat reverse engineered – that an ideology that saw blacks as subhuman developed to justify practices that were making some people a lot of money – so I don’t think that our base instincts lead inevitably to the system we have today.
I think that your premise of the cause and effect relationship between racism and slavery is by no means self-evident.
RonF, I mentioned it not because I think it’s self-evident and not because I feel a powerful need to convince you but to explain some of where my thinking comes from on this.
The reason I tend to see it this way is because slavery existed for thousands of years without being confined to clear-cut racial categories or all-encompassing racial ideologies. People became slaves as punishment for crimes, because their group was defeated in battle, because of economic circumstances. Slave was a class or civil designation that often extended across ethnic groups.
I have no doubt that for the people who engaged in the transatlantic slave trade, the basic otherness of black Africans made it easier for them to do what they did, but they started from economic motivations coupled with indifference to the humanity of the people they were enslaving. They weren’t sitting around in Providence or wherever driven by an incredible hate of black people to sail across the ocean and enslave them. Thinking of black people as not even human became a way to justify the things that were necessary to make a profit selling human beings.
Anyway, I’m not sure for purposes of this argument that you need to accept my argument on this, and I don’t want to derail the whole thing into a discussion of the hows and whys of the transatlantic slave trade. My larger point is that there is not some sort of straight line from a general distrust of outsiders/people who are different to 19th century scientists using skull measurements to “prove” that black people were the missing link between apes and humans (that is, white people).
I didn’t say it was untrue (though just because you and I agree that it’s a likely factor doesn’t make it objectively “true”). I just think it doesn’t get us very far.
@nobody.really
I dig your explanation – maybe because I was a psych/sociology major. After all, systems are made of people and people often are very complicated beings. Having a clear-cut case of racism doesn’t mean that the system is being driven by clear-cut racists. In systemic racism, not all the perpetrators are acting in cooperation with each other; most are merely independent agents who have a set of biases as outlined in your post. I think your explanation is far kinder to aversive racists than most, and allows for a feet of clay clause that could very well be the honey rather than the bitter pill for someone seeking to change their ways but who doesn’t want to be nailed to the ‘racist’ wall.
Thanks, S.T.
Ha! Good point. The three scenarios I describe suggest that bias reflects the limitations inherent in beings with limited capacities that are prone to reliance of compensating strategies. In that sense, they reflect our “nature.”
I was using the term in the context of attribution bias, reflecting the explanations that we offer for other people’s behavior but not our own, as a means of distinguishing ourselves from others. So I’m walking down the street about a block behind my Southern boss. As he’s approaching a corner filled with a bunch of tough-looking Hmong youth, he crosses the street and proceeds along the other sidewalk. “Yeah, what should I expect? It’s just in the nature of Southerners to be racist,” I think to myself. And then I do the same thing, ‘cuz I want to see what’s on special at the restaurant on the other side of the street. But I’m not acting out of any racial concerns, see?
Of course, I DO think it is in the nature of Southerners to be racist; I think it’s in my nature to be racist, and to have biases on all manner of things. The noteworthy fact is that I attribute one rationale to him and a different (more benign) rationale to me as a means of distinguishing myself from him. Upon reflection, I really don’t have any basis for my distinction.
Similarly, I believe that people who feel discriminated against are justified in concluding that discriminators are expressing their “nature.” What makes Mary Anne Mohanraj noteworthy is that she acknowledges that she has the same nature. This insight does not make the problem of racism go away, but it may lead to a somewhat more charitable understanding of the problem.
I have no doubt that for the people who engaged in the transatlantic slave trade, the basic otherness of black Africans made it easier for them to do what they did, but they started from economic motivations coupled with indifference to the humanity of the people they were enslaving. They weren’t sitting around in Providence or wherever driven by an incredible hate of black people to sail across the ocean and enslave them.
Actually, the people who initially captured and enslaved a great many Africans were either fellow Africans or Arabs (yes, I know there’s at least a partial overlap there). My guess – I don’t know, and if someone knows different please enlighten me with a citation – would be that they were already enslaving them for their own use and then saw an economic opportunity extending beyond their own community.
In any case, I don’t question that cultural aspects of certain societies have led to expansion of the core human impulse towards people of different families/tribes/races/religions/etc. into things like racism and expressions of racism into things like the slave trade. But as you point out slavery existed long before Arabs and Africans started capturing and selling slaves to Europeans. Racism != slavery, and slavery != racism; there is racism in America but no slaves, and there have been a great many slaves who are not enslaved on the basis of racism (e.g., POWs who are enslaved). Racism can be used to enable slavery but is not necessary for it and does not necessarily lead to it.
The perceived economic advantage of slavery is the reason for slavery. Racism is the excuse used by those who see an exploitable source of slaves in a group that is a different race from them.
I just think it doesn’t get us very far.
Well, but I think it does. There was a thread on here a while back about how not to go crazy when someone accuses you of racism. One reason people get crazy (I think, anyway) is because they think that having any racism in your mind or heart is evidence of a character flaw; that you started out with a pure heart and then did something wrong to accept racism. Understanding the core source of racism as an expression of basic human nature – as original sin – gives a tool to use to break that down and get people to focus on what to do about it rather than spending all their energy denying it in the first place.
nobody.really said:
I’d challenge your presumption that this is necessarily racism. He may not care to walk through a group of tough-looking youth regardless of their ethnicity. I’d say that from this one instance you have insufficient data to make any conclusion.
….you know, I try to be clever, and I just end up being vague….
Sure enough, young men commit a disproportionate share of violent crime. (Notwithstanding the fact that crime tends to increase during economic downturns, as the average age of Minnesotan climbs the state’s courts are seeing fewer criminal cases and county prisons now have surplus beds.) The risk posed by any one encounter with a youth gang may well be small, but the burden of crossing the street is also small, making the entire transaction arguably rational regardless of racial dynamics.
But this is beside the point. With or without this “tough youths” variable, I still wouldn’t have enough information to answer the “Why did the boss cross the road?” question. The point is, I’m inclined to make such judgments even though I don’t have enough information – indeed, even though I engage in the same conduct that he does and attribute a different motive to myself. That’s how attribution bias works. It’s not a justified conclusion; it’s a bias.
But, yeah, I could have picked a better example to illustrate my point about attribution bias. Fair enough.
Ah, I see. You were talking about the issue of how one attributes motivations, as opposed to asserting definitively what your boss’s motivation was.
Oh, and that would make a great open thread:
Complete the following statement –
“Why did the boss cross the road?”
Right. That’s what I was saying.
And nobody.really … thanks for the clarification.
I think one can see how people are socialized into certain types of racism quite easily if you look at the experiences of people not born in the U.S. For example, the teenage cousin of a friend was visiting from India several years ago. There are pretty much no people of African descent in her part of India, and most Indian people’s exposure to black people, especially before hiphop culture went global, was through Michael Jackson [insert joke] and similar celebrities like Michael Jordan. She spent a lot of the first few days of her visit watching TV, and asked my friend, “Are black people really dangerous?” This is what she had picked up from an accumulation of news, comedies, dramas, movies, etc. without actually having met a single black person.
There was no reason, based on an evolutionary tendency to be wary of people who don’t look like oneself, for her to voice this question about black people instead of, say, white people. She herself looks more African, with regard to skin tone, hair and eye color and facial features, than she looks Caucasian. Yet a few days’ exposure to American culture was enough to “educate” her about who was dangerous.
I’ve noticed that a lot of immigrants rapidly pick up on the American racial hierarchy, and because they aren’t necessarily socialized to understand that while everyone thinks X you can’t say X, end up sounding racist because they actually voice the subtext of what they’re being told.