Category: race

4 Race transforming: more than meets the eye

August 9, 2011
by Crommunist
· blog · critical thinking · crommunism · culture · First Nations · privilege · race · racism

This post was intended to go up on Monday. My apologies for the past month of shakiness. I am hoping to see things settle down in the next couple of weeks.

I left a somewhat cryptic message for you on Monday:

I want to remind people that it’s not okay to dress up as a First Nations person. While it might be a totally cute costume, it’s incredibly disrespectful to wear a feathered headdress and “war paint” to a bar, particularly if you’re going to forgo a shirt for simply a bra, get up on stage and sing a song about fucking guys in exchange for alcohol.

Some of you inquired as to what exactly I was talking about. It seemed like an oddly-specific caution to give – who would actually do something like this? Well, I can report with more than a little sighing and eye-rolling that this is something that I witnessed on Sunday night. A duo of women who called what they were doing “parody” got up on stage at the open mic I host with my band and did some rapping that was offensive not only because of how bad it was, but because of how they were dressed while performing. I mentioned to their friends that they might want to let these ladies know that what they’re doing is incredibly racist – the response was “well she was given that headdress as a gift from a First Nations person.”

A reader contacted me by e-mail to ask a follow-up question about my ‘positive stereotypes’ post last week:

…do you think the desirability of full lips and ample bottoms should be discouraged in the white community? (Angelina Jolie, Scarlett Johansson, etc.) I understand how it could be problematic- that these women made a feature that typically “belongs” to a minority group suddenly desirous when the minority group has had it for many years without it being remarked or noticed. Yet, are physical features different than culture theft?

I sent a reply along the lines that features on their own aren’t necessarily the problem – it’s when those features are racialized (like having “a black girl ass”) that I start to get uncomfortable. Reducing members of minority groups to sexual characteristics is incredibly dehumanizing. While that’s enough of a reason to be suspicious of that kind of fetishization, there was a larger issue that I felt deserved some discussion.

Another reader sent me an e-mail asking for my response to a blog post he had written:

On August 3rd, I came across a news report on MSNBC about Quera Pruitt, a Black student suing her old high school over a homecoming celebration known as “Wigger Wednesday” by students while she attended.

The story in question concerns a school in Minnesota where the student body held a day when the student body was supposed to dress up as “wiggers” – a contraction of the words “white” and “nigger”. I pointed out that above and beyond my objections to using the inherently-racist word “wigger”, it was an event that by definition excludes any student that isn’t white, since there is already a word for a black person that “dresses like a nigger”. Even beyond that, though, there’s another problem that his discussion missed that I think is salient.

All three of these examples speak to an issue that I have alluded to before but never made explicit: race transforming. That is, dressing up or in another way appropriating the hallmarks of another ethnocultural group. I want to first be clear about what I’m not talking about. I am not talking about making an effort to participate in the practices of another group, or trying to incorporate the traditions of another group into your daily life. I think it’s great when people break out of their cultural silos, particularly when it comes to innovating new types of music or food (yum!). Provided that your participation is respectful and you engage in due diligence about the context of whatever tradition you’re involved in, then go nuts.

When I talk about ‘race transforming’, I am talking about taking an image or feature that is specifically associated with one group, and divorcing it of its context. There are a variety of reasons why people do this. In the case of the ladies at the open mic, I guess they thought it was sexy – completely ignoring the fact that those headdresses aren’t just a fashion accessory and have deep cultural significance (to say nothing of the sexualization of the “squaw” image that flies insultingly in the face of the disproportionately high rates of sexual abuse faced by First Nations women). In the case of “black girl asses” or “Puerto Rican eyes” it’s usually intended as some kind of compliment, but is inappropriate for reasons I discussed in my post last week. In the case of “wigger Wednesday” it’s intentional mockery of an already-marginalized group – playing up their poverty for laughs.

The other side of this issue is the fact that while the rappers can slip back into their Lululemon and American Apparel, Scarlett Johansson is a blonde bombshell, and the Minnesota students will go back to being just regular students once they doff their basketball jerseys and chains, the groups they are lampooning have no such recourse. First Nations women have to deal with the double whammy of being sexualized as women and as First Nations people, regardless of what they say, do or wear. Black women might have great asses, but those ‘positive’ features also come alongside a whole host of decidedly-negative stereotypes about black women that are intrinsically-tied to skin colour. “Wiggers” might be comical, but when dressing that way in earnest makes you a target for police profiling and not dressing like that makes you a social outcast, you’re stuck in a bit of a Catch-22.

Of course, this entire line of reasoning assumes that people actually bother to take the time to sit, reflect, and listen to the points of view of other groups. By and large, anyone who thinks that these behaviours/attitudes are acceptable aren’t the kind to really give it a whole lot of thought. They have the ability to ignore the racial marginalization of other groups (gosh, if only there was a word for that), and when confronted about their behaviour they usually pivot to blaming their critics of being “too sensitive”. Perhaps the problem is not an excess of sensitivity, but exactly the opposite.

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3 Getting Over It

August 4, 2011
by Crommunist
· blog · First Nations · news · politics · racism

‘Sfunny, no sooner do I say that I’m reluctant to spend too much time commenting on sensitive issues outside my community than I find myself diving headfirst into those issues with gusto. I don’t know if I have any First Nations or Indian readers, but if I do and you feel I am misrepresenting this stuff I hope you will let me know. While you’re doing that, could you help me with something else? While I was hanging out in Tofino, a man (who I assume is a member of the Nuu-chah-nulth Nation) approached me with his palm raised and said “How”. I’m pretty sure he was goofing with me – people don’t actually say that, right?

However, sometimes events conspire to, in a sense, force my hand. There has been a lot of news relevant to First Nations communities that has popped up on my radar, and I feel that I’d be remiss if I didn’t comment on it. After all, for a guy who says we need to be talking more about racial issues, it would be somewhat hypocritical of me to fail to speak up out of fear.

One of my least favourite statements when talking about disparities of any kind is that the disadvantaged group should just “get over it”. This kind of statement reveals two separate kinds of ignorance. First, it makes the insulting presumption that the reason oppressed people are struggling is because they’ve got a bad attitude – that once they stop playing victim and get off their lazy asses, they will start being as successful as the majority group. The second type of ignorance, related to the first, is that all oppression is historical – that we have solved all the major issues of racism/prejudice, and can now begin holding hands under the rainbow.

Wow is that ever not the case.

Ottawa Not Keeping Pace with First Nations Housing

An evaluation of the federal government’s involvement in housing on First Nations reserves over 13 years confirms what critics have long contended: Ottawa is not keeping up with housing support, and conditions are actually getting worse. The federal government is meeting its own targets for constructing social housing on reserves, but the aboriginal population is growing more quickly than the government plan, says the audit of on-reserve housing support. “Despite ongoing construction of new housing on-reserve, the shortfall still exists and appears to be growing rather than diminishing,” says the evaluation commissioned by the federal Department of Aboriginal Affairs. At the same time, housing is often sub-standard and quickly falls apart. The audit says there is not enough funding to pay for maintenance and upkeep.

This is my major problem with the successive federal governments of Canada (and I will point out again that I do not lay the blame for this all at the feet of Stephen Harper – it has been an ongoing shame on both sides of the aisle) and how they approach addressing crises affecting First Nations people. It is clear from their various responses that they are interested in throwing tax dollars at a problem without bothering to invest themselves into making sure the problems get real, lasting solutions. The government repeatedly demonstrates that it doesn’t actually care to see improvements in the quality of life of First Nations people – only to appease the bleeding hearts enough to get them to stop complaining.

It’s also worthwhile noting that the report specifically points out a lack of capacity to do repairs on your own house as a major source of conflict. As I’ve tried to say all along – part of the funding must be to promote self-sufficiency. Those that complain about tax dollars being “wasted” on First Nations issues should be aware that constant band-aids are far more expensive than a long-term solution. Then again, we have to ask ourselves whether those who think spending money supporting Canadians is a “waste” actually care about seeing solutions.

First Nations Children Still Taken From Parents

After decades of wrestling with the impact of the residential school system – and then with the “Sixties Scoop” that placed so many aboriginal children in non-aboriginal homes – First Nations are now facing another tragedy of lost children in the new millennium. There are more First Nations children in care right now than at the height of the residential school system. That system was a national disgrace that prompted Prime Minister Stephen Harper to apologize for its catastrophic impact on natives. Instead of being at home with their parents, brothers and sisters, tens of thousands of First Nations children are in foster homes, staying with distant relatives or living in institutions.

Conservatives often talk about the importance of “family”, and in one sense I tend to agree with them. It is definitely preferable for a child to be raised in a supportive environment, and oftentimes families provide just such an opportunity. Not all families are supportive, not all people are good parents, and the kind of blanket “every child must have a mother and a father” statements that ‘family values’ types like to try and apply to everyone suffer from a fundamental lack of nuance. All that being said, when a group suffers from a systemic lack of any family structure, it has long-term consequences. This is particularly true when there are issues of cultural preservation at stake.

It should be noted that this is not merely due to a lack of government intervention, but is wrapped up in the systemic problems (including poverty, which I have been meaning to talk about for a while now) that plague the First Nations. It’s a thorny problem to unravel, assuredly, but until we take it on seriously, these kinds of gaps will continue to get worse.

There is a special place in rhetorical hell for the “get over it” argument, and stories like this only serve to strengthen my resolve that this is the case. Discrimination and oppression are not things that used to take place and are better now – they are ongoing and require remediation. Failure to understand that this is so will lead us only to resent victims for their victimhood, rather than recognizing the problem and proposing real solutions. We, as a society, have this idea that systemic racism doesn’t exist, or doesn’t have any power. Maybe we should get over it.

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3 The negative side of ‘positive’ stereotypes

August 3, 2011
by Crommunist
· blog · critical thinking · crommunism · race · racism

Note: Even though this post is going up on Wednesday, this was originally intended as Monday’s ‘think piece’. My apologies for the fractured way I’ve been running this blog for the past month or so – it is summer and my priorities are temporarily shifted away from blogging and toward having fun outside. Once the weather cools off in September and my stream of couch-crashing pals abates, I will be back to normal.

There are a wide variety of stereotypes about different racial groups (a controversial statement, I know). Stereotypes represent our brain’s tendency to try and classify things as simply as possible, since individual processing of every individual object in the universe would be incredibly tiresome, and we’ve got shit to do. Racial groupings are no less (and probably more) prone to that kind of process, and as a result we have a plethora of stereotypical ideas that fall along racial lines. Many of these are obviously negative: Mexicans are lazy, Jews are cheap, black people are violent and prone to crime, white people can’t dance. We tend to abhor those stereotypes in polite company, even if we might happen to believe them in private (except maybe the one about white people not being able to dance – that one still seems okay to laugh about).

However, there are some stereotypes that we often think of as ‘positive’ in racial groups too. Black guys have big cocks and are naturally athletic; East-Asians are good at math; First Nations people have wisdom stemming from being ‘in tune with nature’. These are surely not intended as insults, but rather as complimentary facets of being a member of a given racial group. There’s certainly nothing wrong with having a large penis, right? Or being good at math? Or being well-attuned to the natural world? If anything, these are positive traits that we envy and wish we could have for ourselves.

My problem with these ‘positive’ stereotypes comes from two different sources. First, when one takes the time to examine the implications and history behind some of these stereotypes, it becomes abundantly clear that they are not a net positive for the stereotyped group. Second, they are still products of the same racism as the negative stereotypes, and as it says in the book of Matthew, “…a bad tree cannot bear good fruit.” (I draw a brief distinction here for humour derived from racism that is specifically intended to mock the absurdity of racist beliefs – jokes do not necessarily have to be completely clean.)

So let’s take a look at on of the myths I highlighted above: well-endowed black men. My position is that, despite the fact that this aspect is not obviously negative (I am sure you’ve all heard far more negative things said about black men), it is not complimentary and does damage.

Black men and sexual reduction

During the era of American slavery, black men were inspected like livestock before purchase. Soon-to-be slaves were evaluated not only by their physical statue and health – a proxy for how valuable they were for labour – but also for reproductive characteristics. Unlike purchasing other farm equipment (and once again like livestock), African slaves could do something incredibly lucrative for their owners: create more slaves. In theory, with only a handful of male and female specimens, a single slave-owner could breed generation after generation of new slaves, each saleable at a profit much larger than the cost of feeding. Africans with obvious sexual advantages were highly prized, since they would produce offspring more prodigiously.

After emancipation (well, actually well before emancipation, but let’s not quibble) there was a great hysteria within the white community about black men raping white women. In fact, every time a white woman was caught having sex with a black man, she claimed it was rape – a most unusual coincidence I’m sure you’ll agree. The image of the savage black rapist – his over-sized member swinging in the breeze and becoming engorged at even the thought of sexual violence against tender, innocent, white flesh – became ingrained in the cultural psyche as the essence of black masculinity.

In our modern, post-racial era, we see the same fetishizing of black sexuality in media. Because of the metamorphosis of this myth into a positive aspect (somehow), we are bombarded with jokes about black sexual prowess, particularly the impressive size of the penis. Rap music has added more than its fair share to this meme. I’m not sure how many of you watch porn, but if you do, I challenge you to find a black actor in porn that doesn’t have a comically large penis. Black men are still reduced to a caricature – mindless animalistic creatures whose sole purpose is sex. While it’s never stated so explicitly as that, it nevertheless crops up repeatedly when the meme is examined with a broader view.

I should, and in fact must take a moment to point out that the sexualization of Africans is not relegated solely to men. Black women are slandered and derogated in equal measure (perhaps more, due to the intersection of being black and female), and much of it happens at the hands of black men. The recent obsession we have had with big butts and lips is not an accident – it’s an outcropping of this same reduction of African women to sexual objects, as well as a reaction to the ultra-Aryan standards of beauty seen in the 80s and early 90s. While black men can accept much of the blame for the propogation of this attitude, its genesis can be found in the same cultural conception of Africans as sexual creatures rather than people.

It’s also important to recognize the harmful effects that our historically-based North American perspective on those of African descent has on our modern-day perspective on Africans. While severe poverty, lack of opportunity, poor education, lack of domestic social infrastructure, and international apathy are causing a major AIDS epidemic across many parts of the continent, the narrative from popular culture is that Africans are fucking themselves to death. If only those rutting animals could keep it in their pants for 5 minutes, their problems would be solved, right?

I recognize that I am asking a lot of you, dear reader. I’m seemingly extrapolating a lot of historical context from something as innocuous as ‘black guys have big dicks’, and am asking you to see something that seems fairly neutral as being actively negative and harmful. Maybe you’re not ready to come along with me on that point just yet (you will, just give it some time and thought). For those holdouts, I will take this opportunity to point out that whether neutral or actively negative, racism is not something to be encouraged. When we propagate racial stereotypes, however ‘positive’ we may find them, we are engaging in the same kind of nonsensical heuristic use of the same time as those who commit racist acts that we oppose. Individuals should not be judged based on their ethnic background – not because it isn’t nice, but because it’s very rarely the case that any useful predictions can be made from those classifications. Reducing someone to a societally-defined label is a recipe for disaster, even if you associate that label with positive things.

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3 Disparities redux: the face of today

August 1, 2011
by Crommunist
· blog · critical thinking · race · racism

So the last couple weeks I went on a bit of a binge focusing on the idea of disparities. My operational definition of the word is a difference in access or achievement that is not based on merit – not based on a person’s innate skills or talent that enable them to do something. I spoke first about gender disparities and how they might be hurting everyone. Then I looked at the origins of racial disparities, as well as how those disparities can persist across generations. I realize though that all of those articles I started with the presumption that you, my esteemed readers, agreed that disparities exist. While this is more than likely true, it is still sloppy blogging (if such a phrase makes any sense at all).

Luckily for me, I didn’t have to wait long for some hot-off-the-presses evidence pointing to not only the existence, but the magnitude of racial wealth disparities in the United States:

The median wealth of white households is 20 times that of black households and 18 times that of Hispanic households, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of newly available government data from 2009. These lopsided wealth ratios are the largest since the government began publishing such data a quarter century ago and roughly twice the size of the ratios that had prevailed between these three groups for the two decades prior to the Great Recession that ended in 2009.

The Pew Research analysis finds that, in percentage terms, the bursting of the housing market bubble in 2006 and the recession that followed from late 2007 to mid-2009 took a far greater toll on the wealth of minorities than whites. From 2005 to 2009, inflation-adjusted median wealth fell by 66% among Hispanic households and 53% among black households, compared with just 16% among white households.

So we’ve known about this particular disparity for a while. Black home ownership was at its highest level ever right before the crash. Reports starting coming in of so-called “predatory lending” wherein people whose credit didn’t qualify them for a home loan were targeted for sub-prime mortgages. The banks figured they could make money off of debt defaults, but it turns out you can’t actually just conjure money out of thin air and the whole thing (read: the economy) fell apart.

During the aftermath of all this, it became suggested that black first-time home owners were particularly targeted for these loans, even those whose credit was good enough for a regular mortgage. People who I trust to know about these things were saying that lenders were looking specifically for black borrowers, as they ‘fit the profile’. We may never know the extent to which systemic (and perhaps some overt) racism led to the preferential treatment ‘enjoyed’ by black borrowers, but we can be sure that they were disproportionately screwed over when the bubble burst.

Here’s the thing about home ownership: it’s the first way to build wealth. Wealth does not refer to simply how much income one has; rather, wealth refers to the ability of your money to work for itself. Someone who rents (like myself) must pay the cost of living in the home, and that money disappears and is gone. If you own the home you live in, you may still have to pay the mortgage each month, but most of that is money that you are paying yourself. As a result, your home accumulates its value as you pay off the loan (‘equity’). As you make improvements to the home, its resale value increases. This is not the case when you rent, so in a way your home generates money for you.

So if you start with a group that already has lower-than-average home ownership to begin with, and then loan them poisoned assets so that even those that could afford homes get screwed when the man behind the curtain is exposed, you make the disparity even wider. Add to that the fact that black families living in ‘black neighbourhoods’ being disproportionately loaned to means that the values of those neighbourhoods goes down more than in white neighbourhoods. This has a ripple effect to those black families who already owned their homes as the prices plummeted. Not only was the wealth of those who had made “bad decisions” (read: who were bamboozled by indecipherable contracts that not even the lenders fully understood) erased, but so too was the wealth of those who had played by the rules.

This happened everywhere, not just in black neighbourhoods. However, what this meant is that the people who were given those corrosive loans at a higher rate (black and brown people) were disproportionately affected by the bubble bursting. Whereas white communities insulated the victims of this loan fraud (as a result of low volumes of bad loans), the rush of bankruptcies and foreclosures destroyed black communities. The resulting wealth split made the problem of disparities even worse. Much worse than it has been in a long time:

So whether or not you believe that it was intentional malice or just an ‘accident’ of systemic racism, we see that predatory lending patterns has created a reality in which black and brown people saw their wealth, built up over generations, destroyed in the twinkling of an eye. Not because of laziness, not because of genetic inferiority, not because they didn’t have the work ethic to stop waiting for a government handout, but as the direct result of racism. Not the overt racism of their parents’ day, but the racism that I try my best to describe to you on these pages.

Anyone who would like to dispute whether or not racism is still a relevant problem in today’s “post-racial” society, or who thinks that the problems plaguing black people aren’t due to prejudicial attitudes about their skin colour, or who thinks that “individual responsibility” is the key to understanding the different realities faced by members of racial minority groups and the majority group… those people are now invited to suck it.

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14 The people you meet when you talk about race

July 27, 2011
by Crommunist
· blog · funny · race · racism

Note: This article is cross-posted over at Racialicious.

If you’ve ever glanced at the links on the sidebar of this page, you may have noticed that I link to a *shudder* tumblr account. Yes, my guilty little pleasure is a fantastic tumblr called ‘STFUconservatives‘. It’s a sort of clearing house for random clips of stupidity that fall from the lips and fingers of conservative (mostly) Americans. Most of it is the kind of run-of-the-mill myopia and lack of critical thinking that I’ve grown accustomed to seeing from those on the right (and to be sure, there is a STFUliberals site – it’s somewhat less populated), but every now and then they put up little gems like this one:

The People You Meet When You Write About Rape

Mr. What About The Men
“The real problem here is all these false rape accusations that are destroying our society! 90 million men are falsely accused of rape every second! A woman just has to sort of mumble a word starting with ‘r’ and a man instantly gets a life sentence! There are no instances on record of a woman actually being raped!”

Ms. Tough Girl
“If women would learn martial arts–70-year-olds and women with disabilities can do this if they put their minds to it, darnit–and carry weapons everywhere, no one would ever get raped! All you have to do is be ready to threaten your own friends and lovers with lethal force at any moment, any anyone who can’t do that must be weak or something.”

…

There’s a list of 14 examples with a bit of snark sprinkled in for good measure. Now if this blog was a lot more popular, I’d get a lot more comments and thus would have a lot more examples to show you, but I’ll try and condense my few years of having these conversations into a similar list. And so, for your amusement, here are…

The People You Meet When You Write About Race

Mr. History
“Black people were enslaved like a million years ago. They’ve had enough time to get their act together, but they’re still whining about their problems. I don’t want to hear about transgenerational wealth gaps and discriminatory hiring practices! Their problem is that they’re lazy! Case closed!”

Ms. Kumbayah
“We need to recognize that everyone is just the exact same on the inside. Why do we bother using labels like “black” and “white” anyway? Even though the way society treats people falls along racial lines to the detriment of some and benefit of others, we should ignore that! Aren’t we all just members of the human race?”

Mr. Hear No Evil
“It’s people like you that are the real racists! Most people don’t think twice about someone else’s race! Talking about race is what makes racism happen, not entrenched ideas that won’t change unless they’re discussed!”

Ms. Myopia
“I’m a black person, and I haven’t ever felt mistreated because of it. Therefore, nobody else has any business complaining about racism – I’m living proof that it doesn’t exist!”

Mr. Funk & Wagnalls
“Here is the dictionary definition of racism. You can see right here that it describes only one small subset of behaviour. You have no business advocating that the definition of a word change to fit a changed environment of racist behaviour, even if it still describes the old racism. You must adhere to this one definition always!”

Ms. Minimizer
“Sure, racism used to be a big problem, but there’s lots of black people in prominent positions these days. Can’t we stop talking about racism like it’s still a big issue? The President is black, and clearly nobody has any problem with that! Don’t we have more important things to talk about?”

Mr. Liberal White Guilt
“White people are the worst! You’re absolutely right. I am a white person, and I just feel so awful every time I hear about what my people are doing to yours. We need to start fixing the problems in the black community. After all, that’s what we do – go into other communities and solve their problems!”

Ms. Mythology Kook*
“White people are the worst! You’re absolutely right. I am sick and tired of watching the white man destroy us. It’s time to rise up and take to the streets. Until we show them that the black man is the original man, and that white people are an ancient genetic experiment to create a human being without a soul, we’ll never achieve true freedom.”

Mr. Bootstraps
“I’m so sick and tired of people talking about ‘white privilege’. My father was an immigrant from Switzerland, and he had to struggle just like everyone else to make money. His life was tough – you call that privilege? I didn’t get a handout from anyone, and neither should anyone else!”

Ms. Interpretation
“Affirmative action? Isn’t that just where white people aren’t allowed to have jobs because they’re all saved for less-qualified minorities? That’s just slavery but in the other direction – reverse slavery! My cousin knows a guy whose brother didn’t get into his first-choice college, possibly because of affirmative action – racism against white people is the biggest problem nowadays!”

Mr. Conspiracy
“Of course you’d say that – the NAACP has been pushing that lie since they were formed! This whole ‘anti-racism’ thing is just a way of taking white people’s hard-earned money and putting it into welfare programs and health care. It’s how black people are planning on getting reparations!”

Ms. Extraterrestrial
“You monkeys are just mad that you’re genetically inferior to our master race! Once our society, which was created by white people, shakes off this liberal brainwashing, we’ll finally be able to send you animals back to where you came from. Get over it – white people are just superior!”

But I would be remiss and completely unfair if I didn’t mention…

Mr./Ms. Has Been Listening
“This topic made me really uncomfortable when I first started talking about it, but I’m glad I did. I’m not sure if I ‘get’ everything, but my thinking has definitely changed. Here are some reasonable objections and questions that I have, and I hope we can talk about them without offending each other.”

I am really happy to report that while I have personally met all of the above people, Has Been Listening is by far my most common interaction. All of the above are conversations I relish having, and it is my fervent hope that I am slowly equipping you to navigate those waters as well as I could. As I’ve said all along, the more talking we do, the more we learn.

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*A commenter over at Racialicious has taken me to task for originally calling this “Ms. Black Nationalist Kook”. She was right to do so, since the attitude is orthogonal to Black Nationalism. I have made this revision, with an apology to my Nationalist sisters/brothers who I have mischaracterized.

3 You’re not “a racist”; you’re just racist

July 26, 2011
by Crommunist
· blog · critical thinking · crommunism · psychology · racism

This past weekend I was chatting with a friend of mine about a variety of topics, including the tragic shootings in Norway. He was trying to establish that the event was an isolated incident by one crazy person, while I was suggesting that those kinds of things don’t happen in a vacuum. I pointed to a parallel argument I had when it comes to hate groups like Blood and Honour – the extremists are often the outliers of a group that holds similar views but would stop short of violence.

His response was fairly typical: “well there are always going to be some racists out there, but that doesn’t mean everyone is responsible.”

He was wrong, for reasons that I discuss in the linked post above, but it was the language he used that particularly irked me. “Some racists” is not a phrase I could ever see myself using, except in an unthinking moment. Not only is it an unwieldy phrase that could be convicted for abuse of the English language, it tips its hand as to how deeply the speaker misunderstands the origins and mechanisms of racism. I’ve touched on this discussion before, but I would like to talk explicitly about why this phrase is either a) meaningless, or b) profoundly ignorant.

First, we must revisit our operational definition of racism. Please note that I am using the term ‘operational definition’ intentionally – I use this definition for my own purposes, but it means many different things to different people. I think that my definition is the most accurate I’ve come across (obviously), but others would disagree. The chief component of my definition is that racism happens when attitudes or beliefs about a racial group are ascribed to an individual. Essentially, it makes the assumption that a person’s racial background provides sufficient information to predict their behaviours, which is not supported by evidence. This is to say nothing of the fact that the attitudes or beliefs about a group could be (and often are) fundamentally flawed.

It becomes fairly clear, when we consider this definition, that all people are potentially susceptible to this kind of heuristic thinking. I am sure that I have gone on rants about what “conservatives” do and do not believe, when conservativism does not necessitate given beliefs on any topic – rather conservative thinking tends to lead to a cluster of beliefs, many of which are often shared by those that describe themselves as “conservative”. It is a cognitive shortcut, but one that oversimplifies a process that is important to understand – what the mental scaffolding supporting conservative beliefs (or liberal beliefs) is. Simply labeling people as “conservatives” masks that thought process, putting effect in the place of cause.

Similarly, I rankle whenever someone uses the phrase “a racist”, because it commits the same error. Racism is a cognitive process, and as such exists as the engine behind actions and attitudes, rather than their essential component. Calling someone “a racist” suggests that there is some kind of binary state of ‘racist’ and ‘not racist’ in which people can exist. It supposes further that when someone performs an action or voices an attitude that is itself racist, that it is their existence in the first of these binary conditions that is primarily responsible – as though there is something organically racist within them that doesn’t exist in the general population. You know, the general population of ‘not racists’.

Of course it’s trivially easy to recognize the fallacious thinking at work here. All we have to do is look back over the last few decades and note the monumental rate of spontaneous remission that happened in ‘racists’. A sudden seroconversion that has removed all the malignant racist cells and replaced them with healthy non-racistocytes. Or, perhaps racism isn’t quite so simple as that. When we see racism as simply a product of human cognitive shortcuts, the idea of being “a racist” starts to fall apart. After all, if we’re all susceptible to racist thoughts and behaviours (that are, for most of us, subconscious), then can anyone be described as “not racist”? Does it exist on some kind of continuum like the DSM where people that exhibit a certain pattern of behaviour can be diagnosed with “racist personality disorder”?

No. Racism is best understood as the product of ideas, both conscious and unconscious, about other people, and our tendency to try and reduce people to convenient labels (like… oh, I dunno… ‘a racist’). I can certainly understand why people like to use this term, because it allows them to preserve their self-concept of being a good person and scapegoat racist activities as the product of “racists”. Once blame has been assigned in this way, then the speaker can dust her/his hands off and say “it’s not my problem – I’m not a racist.” However, that simply means the problems never get solved, because the only people whose self-concept allows them to brand themselves as being “a racist” are proud of that appellation.

This is why I am in favour of using my own definition of racism, because it renders the idea of being ‘a racist’ completely ridiculous. While it may be convenient to describe people as being ‘a racist’, it distracts from what is actually happening behind the scenes in such a way as to increase societal inertia when it comes to dealing with race issues. It is far more accurate and useful to think of racism as a set of cognitive conditions that encourage a certain kind of behaviour – conditions that are present in us all. What this allows us to do is confront our own biases – no matter how uncomfortable they might make us – and in so doing, make positive changes to minimize the harms they may cause.

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4 Same planet, different worlds

July 21, 2011
by Crommunist
· blog · psychology · race · racism · religion

“Intersectionality” is a word that is new to my lexicon – a lexicon that constantly expands as I delve deeper into the anti-racist and feminist literature. The word intersectionality refers to (so far as I can tell) the way in which identical variations in one variable can elicit a differential result based on a third variable that doesn’t seem to be related. For example, men and women have good reason to react differently to seemingly-innocuous stimuli, like being approached for sex late at night on an elevator. It is not the nature of the stimulus on its own, but the intersection of the stimulus with the third variable of gender that determines the nature of the response.

Those of us familiar with multivariate regression modeling (yes – this is the single lamest thing I have ever bragged about on the internet) can easily wrap our heads around this concept. For others, it can become quite difficult to grasp how something that might seem completely unrelated to an event could completely change the way we react to that event. To help illustrate the concept, and to tip my hat to one of my favourite comic artists, I am entitling this post Same Planet, Different Worlds.

For historical reasons, race and religion in the United States are not independent variables. However, in a scientific sense there is no biological or chemical reason why, for instance, black people would be more religious than white people. However, we do see an interesting intersection between race, religion, and attitude toward interracial marriage:

Pew’s February Political Typology Poll asked people about recent trends in American society. Pew asked if “more people of different races marrying each other” was good or bad society. Overall, only nine percent of Americans said it was bad for society. However, 16 percent of white evangelicals said this, more than twice the opposition found among other Americans (7 percent). The survey found that 27 percent of Americans overall said more interracial marriage was good for society, compared to 17 percent of evangelicals.

The first thing I want to draw your attention to in the above excerpt and figure is the difference that simply being religious makes on one’s attitude toward interracial marriage. When compared to those who reported having no religion, far fewer Christians look at an increase in marriages that transcend racial barriers as a positive outcome for society. There is nothing inherent in Christianity stating that racial groups are created separate. That kind of idea has been imprinted onto Christianity in the United States since the days of Emancipation, but it is not biblically doctrinal. That being said, because it has become doctrine in many branches of American Christianity, it is no surprise to me that religion would have this effect.

The second thing to look at, however, is the effect that being black and religious has on these attitudes. While the number who view such marriages positively is more or less neck-and-neck with their coreligionists, the number that view them negatively is tiny. It is the intersection of the dueling identities of ‘black’ and ‘Protestant’ that fuels this outcome. Because ‘miscegenation’ is still anathema to the American Christian,* there can be no approval of race mixing. However, at the same time black people have remarkably different attitudes toward interracial marriage. Because of the prevailing societal attitudes about the different races, there are remarkably different social implications for a black person in an interracial marriage than a white person.

I have tried my best so far to avoid using judgmental language in this discussion. It’s difficult, because obviously the subject of interracial marriage is very personal to me. However, I have to remain mindful of the fact that these peoples’ opinions are the product of their environments, rather than some deficit in their character (more on that on Monday). That being said, I can definitely attack the ideas they hold with no restraint, which I will do now.

The kind of evil that fuels the nearly 20% of white evangelical Christians is possible only when you think your small-mindedness is justified by some kind of divine mandate. While there will always be some hateful people in every group, please let these findings put to rest the idea that Christianity makes people more tolerant or better people. What it does, what all religions do, is give people permission to throw aside introspection and thought-based ethics in favour of easy answers and a false sense of superiority. Considering the insular nature of many evangelical communities, the lack of exposure to dissenting opinions simply serves to make matters worse.

I have a sneaking suspicion that most people I know would think that “doesn’t make much of a difference” is the ‘correct’ answer. After all, we are told we are not supposed to have feelings about race, either positive or negative. Personally, if I were asked this question I’d say that more intermingling of racial groups is definitely a good thing for society, since it furthers the erosion and blurring of the lines separating racial groups. When you have kids whose parents are two different ‘things’, then it’s kind of difficult to see either one or the other as superior (though God knows South Africa tried).

To bring it back to my original point, it’s important to recognize that ‘intersectionality’ is a real force, and understanding it is key to understanding why members of a group might have different reactions to an event. It’s certainly important to understand if you, for instance, want to increase the number of visible minorities in your political movement (wink wink, nudge nudge).

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*It is important at this point to note that I don’t think that all Christians in the United States are race-baiting hate mongers. I am merely making the point that this type of ‘safeguarding’ of ‘racial purity’, when couched in religious language, comes from a uniquely American brand of Christianity.

0 The entrenchment of disparity

July 20, 2011
by Crommunist
· blog · critical thinking · education · race · racism

I spent a great deal of time last week talking about disparities – differences in access and achievement – that exist along sex or racial lines. Wednesday’s post looked explicitly at a topic that is dear to my heart: education. Education is, in my opinion, the key to societal progress. It is not simply enough to know stuff – we have to be skilled at appraising the truth about the stuff we know, and in finding new ways to test that knowledge. That is what it is to be educated, and when a group of people is held back from obtaining those skills, it has far-reaching effects. When one group is deprived while another has access, we begin to see widening disparities.

But, while education is a major part of what is needed for a group of people to make progress, it is not alone in the pantheon of resources in which we see major disparities. Submitted for your scrutiny, here is a top 10 list of career areas in which black people are disproportionately underrepresented:

Teaching
Law
Science and Technology
Academia
College Athletics
Advertising
Construction
Media and Telecommunications
Health Care
Fashion

These positions are better fleshed out in the article itself, but even a cursory glance at this list paints a pretty bleak picture. The order I’ve listed these fields is the order in which they’ve been printed in the article, but I think a better story can be told if we can group them thematically. If you’ll allow me, I’ll point to some trends I see in this list.

Black people don’t lead (#1, #4, #5, #8)

Everyone can point to teachers that changed their lives. I had Ms. Mooney in high school, and Drs. Anthony and Ward in my undergraduate that laid down the foundation for a lot of my professional life through constant encouragement and support. While I wasn’t involved in sports (I was a drama kid – there were more girls in the school play than on the football team), I know many people who received mentorship and guidance from their coaches. Media figures also help young people develop their ideas and expose them to differing perspectives on the world.

The underrepresentation of black people in these fields means that there are few black role models in leadership positions. We know from psychology that modeling is one of the principal ways that humans learn, and actually differentiates us from many other animal species that learn through a more trial/error process. In absence of models in the black community in leadership positions, an unconscious equivalence between non-black skin and leadership (or, conversely, the lack of association between black skin and leadership) becomes more deeply entrenched as generations pass.

Black people don’t innovate (#2, #3, #4)

A modern nation is defined by its laws. Most of the major fights happening in Canada and the United States are happening in the courts. Indeed, many of our political leaders come from the legal sphere. Beyond the simple legal battles, the developed world doesn’t make its money through manufacturing or agriculture anymore – it does it by developing new and innovative ideas and technologies. Because we have a big slice of the world’s money, we’re the only ones that can really afford to test new ideas and “waste” time on avenuesof research that don’t immediately pan out.

When black people are disproportionately excluded from the fields of law, science and academics, we find ourselves outside the process looking in. Instead of being a part of the process of choosing and developing innovative ideas, we are instead relegated to observing them (whilst hoping they aren’t used to our disadvantage, which they often are). As I noted with the lack of black faces in the halls of political power, an absence of black people in the decision-making process means that people make decisions on their (our) behalf, often without having any first-hand knowledge of the issues we consider important.

Black people don’t contribute (#7, #9)

There is a certain level of pride and ownership that comes with building things, or with caring for each other. Beyond the simple instrumental utility of having a bridge or mending a broken bone, public works help bring us together as a society. When someone can point to a building and say “I helped build that” or to a child and say “I helped deliver her”, it reminds us of how connected we are to each other and how important our communal sense really is to our day-to-day lives.

When one group is removed from that process, however, they can become alienated. I’ve seen this with First Nations groups who reject intervention by government, not because it’s ineffective, but because they had no hand in building it. Not only could black people begin to feel like outsiders, but we also begin to be seen as outsiders that aren’t helping. It doesn’t take too exhaustive a perusal of white supremacist writings to uncover the pervasive myth that white people built our country, and everyone else is just there to sponge off of “their” hard work.

Black people don’t control our own brand (#6. #8, #10)

The longer I do this kind of writing, the more I get the feeling that what antiracists like myself are actually doing is a type of brand management – we are concerned with the way black people (or pick your group of interest) are perceived and portrayed by the public. Media outlets, commercial interest, and other industries concerned with image are what help create, sell, and defend a brand. If I can be so callous and mechanistic about a serious topic, we really are talking about taking control of our own public face.

However, when we see our group missing from the ranks of those that really sell that brand, then we have little control over how we are seen. When our news outlets, our advertising and our haute couture are run by people who may not have the most favourable impression of black folks, it’s no wonder that negative perceptions pervade our popular culture.

So we see the kinds of employment disparity at play here can have effects that reach far beyond simple lack of certain types of jobs. They have significant impact in a larger culture that dictates how we think of certain groups. This difference doesn’t simply stop with those who are unemployed – it means that there is less likely to be a next generation of people who are more interested in challenging the status quo. Far from racism becoming eradicated, we are more likely to see an organic type of segregation that has the effect of Jim Crow laws, without the need for legislation.

Once again, and I grow more convinced on this point as I learn more, if we are interested in seeing these disparities fade, then we need to make an active concerted effort. Simply sitting idly and waiting for the situation to resolve spontaneously will have the effect of allowing these non-intentional types of racism become cemented. The article from which the list is taken raises this issue, and points to efforts that have been made to balance the scales. However, without public support these programs come under fire by those who think that giving someone a leg up is cutting the legs out from under someone else.

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7 Why do we want diversity?

July 18, 2011
by Crommunist
· blog · critical thinking · crommunism · gender · race · secularism · skepticism

A copy of this post appears at Phil Ferguson’s Skeptic Money blog.

The skeptic/atheist movement is an interesting case study in group dynamics. It is a group that is subject to all the same vices and cognitive blindnesses that plague all human beings: self-centredness, arrogance, in-group bias, lack of self-awareness, hostility and stubbornness in the face of dissenting ideas. However, it is simultaneously a group that is acutely aware of human failings and constantly looks for ways to overcome them. As a result, we see pretty regular blow-ups, scandals, and strings of self-righteous blog posts that take opposing sides of pretty much every minor issue that crops up.

I, for one, wouldn’t change that for the world. Political movements thrive on passion, and provided we don’t start splitting ourselves into irreconcilable camps that are too busy tearing each other down to work together, occasional (read: incessant) spats are a small price to pay. Debate is good, debate is important.

One of my favourite aspects of the group is that, despite the diversity of beliefs, we tend to be a fairly liberal bunch. This is, to my mind, the natural result of being a critical thinker – when you replace “obviously” with “evidently” as the sufficiently persuasive criterion, your beliefs become more fluid and nuanced. Things that are “obvious” are seldom so to everyone, and usually coloured with a whole host of assumptions, many of which are unwarranted. Freethinkers have been quick to adopt the cause of the LGBT movement, and are currently struggling through the task of embracing feminism. Freethinkers like Debbie Goddard, Sikivu Hutchinson, and myself (if I can flatter myself and place my name in such august company) are pushing to introduce anti-racist ideas into the freethinkers toolbox.

At the same time, I also recognize that there is a great deal of normative pressure involved in the group dynamic – even among a group of freethinkers, a fair amount of ‘group think’ tends to go on that we try and sweep under the carpet. Some ideas are adopted as slogans without really being vetted by the cerebral cortex. We’re only human and not every idea can be fully chewed over – we’d cease getting anything else done.

I’ve said all the above to say the following. The freethinking community has, of late, embraced the word “diversity” with both arms. Panels are popping up at major meetings to discuss the need for multiple voices, groups are starting to look less monocultural/monosexual, and discussants nod their heads sagely when ‘the D word’ comes up in conversation. We are, as a group, beginning to talk more and more about the importance of including women and visible minorities in the conversation.

Of course, I couldn’t call myself a skeptic if I wasn’t just a little bit cynical about what is fueling this fairly rapid adoption. Maybe ‘rapid’ is a mischaracterization borne of my own recent arrival to the movement, but it seems as though a few people started talking about diversity and then within a span of a year or so, everyone was talking about it. It may in fact be the case that people were flogging this issue for years before I started paying attention, and I just noticed at the last minute. If this is so, then I apologize. However, the salient point is that diversity went from being “not a big deal” to “central to the freethinking movement” very quickly.

The most optimistic explanation of this fact is simple: because the freethinking movement is open to new ideas and stocked with humanists, we are of course going to work to address inequities when they happen within our own ranks. It is no strange feat, therefore, for this particular group to make rapid wholesale changes in how they (we) talk and think about important issues. Diversity of thought is embraced because it is important, and we have recognized that.

A slightly more nuanced explanation is that a small number of opinion leaders started listening to those who had been speaking about the need for diversity, and the audiences of those opinion leaders adopted the new position. When speakers and media figures and bloggers began talking about the need for diversity in the movement, people who watch read and listen incorporated the subject into their lexicon without really needing the kind of understanding that is borne of a full explanation.

The most cynical of the potential explanations is that because the movement is chock-a-block with white liberals, the popularity of diversity is due to a strong desire to avoid appearing sexist/racist/anti-gay. Anyone familiar with the term ‘white guilt’ will immediately understand what I’m driving at – oftentimes being a member of the majority leaves you with a feeling of obligation and the overwhelming drive to ensure that nothing you do can be construed as bigoted. While this is a useful way of getting white people to do what you want (as a minority), it’s an incredibly limited and shallow solution that eventually breeds resentment.

My reason for suspecting the presence of this third motive comes from a few sources, but there is one instance that sticks out in my mind. I shared a link to a blog post I had written on Reddit’s r/atheism subgroup. In the comments section, someone disagreed with my general thrust along a predictable line (“why do people need to identify as black atheists? Why can’t we all just be atheists?”) When I tried to explain my position, the conversation ended with the commenter saying “well you should post an AMA [ask me anything – a common type of post on Reddit] about what it’s like to be a black atheist.” My response was “I have an entire blog about that. You should read it – it’s good.”

My interlocutor seemed to think that his involvement in the conversation was over by telling me that it was my responsibility to explain myself – despite the fact that I had already explained myself to him, and despite the fact that I have an entire website explaining myself. His interest was in shutting down the conversation because the topic was making him uncomfortable. The onus wasn’t on him to learn something, it was on me to make him feel better. This is typically symptomatic of white guilt – I am interested in feeling better, not in learning how to contribute.

I am inclined to think that there is a bit of all three of the above motives going on. As I said earlier, while we are freethinkers and skeptics, we are also human beings, and human beings are full of frailties and flaws. As much as we’d like to believe our thoughts are pure, true skepticism is an ideal only – not achievable in a complete sense. Also insofar as we are talking about a group of people, there are going to be a variety of factors that compel us to act. Given that fact, I am going to take a moment to speak to those who understand that diversity is good, but may not really understand why.

Why do we want diversity?

Most everyone is familiar with the parable of the blind men and the elephant – a group of men who cannot see encounter an elephant and each describes it differently, based on which part they are feeling. The resolution to that story, depending on the cultural context, is that a wiser man (or one who has encountered an elephant before) tells them that they are all right, despite their wildly disparate descriptions.

The truth is rarely accessible from a single perspective – there are often a wide variety of interpretations that bring us a fuller understanding of a phenomenon, particularly when we are talking about topics related to personal interaction. This is not to say that “all perspectives are equally valid” – that’s a load of post-modernist bullcrap. What it is to say is that when it comes to perception, it is rare that any one narrative captures the full experience, and that multiple overlapping points of view brings us a much better picture.

Given that one’s experiences as, say, a black woman or a gay man or a person with physical disability colours one’s perception in ways that someone outside of that group might have difficulty understanding, it is expedient to include members of those groups. Doing so grants us a wider and richer set of experiences that we might not otherwise be able to access. It opens us up to avenues and sensitivities and nuances that we’d overlook unless we were particularly attuned to them.

The typical rejoinder often comes back: “so are you saying it’s impossible for a white person to understand issues facing black people?” No, I am not saying that. If I believed that, then I’d have given up on writing long ago. There are certainly many white people that are scholars of the black experience that probably know the issues better than most black people themselves. What I am saying is that it is far more difficult to find people like that, and far easier instead to include people who have had those experiences personally, rather than by proxy.

Beyond this simple issue of expediency of wisdom, however, there is another reason why diversity is a good thing. I alluded to it last week, and while the example I gave was perhaps not the ‘smoking gun’ type of evidence for me to draw this conclusion, I hope that I may be granted a bit of leeway. It is entirely possible that diversity makes us smarter – that bringing a variety of experiences and types of communication to a group may, counter-intuitively, collectively make us better at solving problems. Failing to foster a diverse environment may be hurting our cause needlessly – surely the monocultural environment reported by minority skeptics isn’t intentional – more likely simply a product of ordinary inattention.

Concluding thoughts

While the freethinking movement has gained a great deal of momentum in the past few years, it is important to reflect and ‘take stock’ of where we are going. We have a number of tools at our disposal, and I think we are doing ourselves a disservice if we don’t begin to see diversity of experience as an asset rather than an obligation. Whatever our reasons for ‘talking the talk’ when it comes to diversity, the sooner we come to realize that it is a boon for us to ‘walk the walk’, the faster this process will take place.

TL/DR: There has been a lot of talk about ‘diversity’ in the skeptic/atheist movement of late, and I am a tad suspicious as to why it has gained such rapid acceptance. There are a number of reasons why this may be so, some more noble than others. Regardless of our motives, diversity is a benefit to the movement, and this should be a good enough reason on its own to work to encourage it.

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2 Movie Friday: Seinfeld

July 15, 2011
by Crommunist
· blog · movie · race · racism

I spent a lot of time talking about the ways in which inequalities – particularly those that fall along racial lines – manifest themselves. I made a point of highlighting those cases where it was clear that the root of the problem was systemic rather than personal; that is, where racism could not be chalked up to personal malice but rather to ordinary cognitive blindness.

However, my thesis has always been that systemic racism and personal racism are simply two sides of the same coin – that the real root of racism is the practice of ascribing group characteristics to individuals, wherein an entire person can be reduced to her/his race. To try and illustrate this point, I am posting this video today:

http://www.dailymotion.com/embed/video/xq821
Danny on seinfeld

(Cannot get embed code to work – Dailymotion is a horseshit server, and I apologize. The clip is worth clicking through to see though, I promise.)

So it is up to you, dear reader, to decide what kind of racism is evinced by the cast of Seinfeld – is this personal animus on the part of Jerry and Larry, or is it simply a brain fart? When a minority character can only be exploited for stereotype laughs (of several recurring supporting characters, I can’t think of a single one on the show that wasn’t white – Edit: Jackie the lawyer), is that a reflection of a hidden agenda of personalized racism, or is it just ‘one of those things’?

I put it to you that this seeming contradiction is nothing more than a borderline case between two definitions of racism that are actually two aspects of the same underlying issue, and someone trying to succeed in the industry has to either play into a self-parody token role that undermines their own credibility, or they don’t get paid.

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