What is racism?
First off, a level check on Violet’s status: crappy. Migraine, incredibly horrifying oil spill with suffering animals, evil racist trolls annoying me, and so on. Not liking the world right now.
Nevertheless, it is my duty as a blogger to, you know, blog. Since my migraine (now receding, thank god) is of no interest to anyone but me, and since I will have a full-blown anxiety breakdown if I think too much about the animals in the Gulf, I guess we’re going to go with racism as our Topic of the Day.
The wise and wonderful Adrienne left this comment on the immigration thread:
Re 51% of people supporting AZ’s new law (or at least saying they support it based on not fully understanding the import), I’m not surprised. I remember noting the rift this conversation created in the Democratic Party the last time immigration was the hot topic, and thinking that it has the potential to split the “left.” I’m not prepared to just label it latent racism — that’s too simplistic. It’s an emotional issue that triggers people’s deepest fears about losing what they see as theirs to someone else — The Other — yes, even people who ordinarily couldn’t conceive of feeling that way. All the more scary in an environment where most people are being squeezed economically. This issue being pressed now by Republican AZ is no happenstance. It’s timed to even further erode support for Democrats this fall. No win situation.
Let us take this comment as our point of departure, shall we?
I agree overall with Adrienne’s assessment, though I would question slightly the implied distinction she makes between “people’s deepest fears about losing what they see as theirs to someone else — The Other” and racism. I know what she means, of course. I would simply clarify that when we start viewing whole groups of people who are ethnically distinct from us as The Other — which is what’s happening now with the anti-immigration sentiment — then we are well on our way down Racism Road.
So what is racism? I think that, fundamentally, it’s an absence of compassion. It is the inability to see other people as human beings, as individuals. Racism means classifying an entire group of people as a collective entity (with imagined characteristics), rather than as a collection of individual people. That’s not all it is, of course: racism implies that the group in question is ethnically distinct, and that the attitude is negative.
Thinking about it this way helps illuminate why racism is so common. It’s a limitation of human capacity. It’s liable to pop up anywhere, in anybody, whenever there are too many strangers or too much culture shock or too much threat. We’re apes in a very crowded forest, fighting over bananas.
Notice I’m not saying that racism is acceptable, or that the appropriate response is “eh..whaddyagonna do?” The limitations of human nature give rise to all kinds of horrible things that, like racism, must be abhorred: rape, murder, war, slavery, cruelty, sexism, exploitation, oppression, Gulf oil spills, and so on. These things are not to be accepted. These things are to be resisted, and our nature trained as far as possible to transcend the petty terrors and mindless cruelties that bedevil us.
A related point is that even when “fear of The Other” and racism are different things, they’re still driven by the same type of impulse. The engine of racism is, at bottom, the same evil demon lurking in the brain that makes us hate and fear any other apes who might take our bananas. I’m sure that, as Adrienne suggests, many people backing the new immigration laws aren’t racist in the sense that they have bad feelings about Mexicans or Hispanics. They’re just worried about the other apes taking away their bananas. And they’re so worried about it that they’ve lost the ability to perceive or care about the other apes as, well, other apes. Apes like themselves, with families and fears and feelings. They’re just The Other now.
And that’s my big thought for the day.
30 Responses to “What is racism?”
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Adrienne in CA says:
{blushing}
May 5th, 2010 at 2:35 am EST -
propertius says:
This particular ape is a lot more worried about the apes that want to take away his Fourth and Fifth Amendments than he is about the apes that might want some of his bananas. Bananas grow on trees – civil liberties don’t.
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bob c says:
Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Don’t civil liberties end when they usurp those of others. At what point does sharing the last of the bananas become unacceptable? How many do we feel is our inalienable right to accumulate and/or hoard? “Imagine all the people sharing all the world”…Yes, I know. Good luck with that! Silly animals we are.
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votermom says:
It’s scapegoating — the people (or apes) in power know that the masses are angry and scared so they give them a target.
It’s a traditional tactic of uneasy rulers (like pogroms, etc).
I think it’s important to point out the truth; that the real causes of poverty and uncertainty are the corrupt policies of the government. -
Unree says:
Just a postscript: Sexism gives human beings their first experience of othering another human being and thinking of her as ‘less than’–an instrument to meet their needs rather than an end in herself. Without the training wheels of sexism, people couldn’t so easily ride the bicycle of racism. (Of course, sexism is a bicycle too.)
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MojaveWolf says:
My sympathy for the headaches, Violet. I get migraines too and hate hate hate hate. (had one yesterday afternoon, actually; bright sunlight is one of my main triggers, and since I habitually lose my sunglasses–they generally last about a couple of weeks before disappearing or breaking–by leaving them places and then have to drive home in a sun-off-glass-and-metal glare, umm, migraines) .
And I feel the same about the other thing. The sheer horror combined with my inability to do anything meaningful; Have to shut that part of my brain out or would start screaming and breaking things and talking about my overwhelming sadness and guilt at being human and expressing various violent impulses
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And yeah, lots of xenophobia and economic insecurity. Tho also lots of misleading non-facts running around in the media, much of it deliberate misinformation (w/voter mom on the scapegoating angle). And a complete failure of imagination with regard to the dangers of this law for even the “this is *our* country” types. And a “what’s wrong with a police state if it keeps us safe?”mindset I find, um, “alien,” even aside from my issues w/the basic premise about added safety via that route.Most of which has nothing to do with “what is racism, so sorry if I’m waaaaaaay off topic. I have nothing to add on that other than what has already been said about common roots of different types of xenophobia, and I should say something along w/expressing sympathy.
Also, this post made me hungry. I need breakfast.
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propertius says:
Bob c@3:
Maybe if we didn’t dig up all our banana trees and ship them overseas, we’d have more bananas here at home. The CFR did a study on the economic effects of illegal immigration in the US a couple of years ago. Their basic conclusion was that the effect on net public spending was essentially neutral and the effect on GDP was very slightly positive (although they did allow that there was enough uncertainty in the data that things could go either way – in any event, the effect is pretty small):
http://www.cfr.org/content/pub.....nCSR26.pdf
Just because I don’t think that cops should be able to arbitrarily hassle folks for documentation that most actual citizens don’t carry on their persons doesn’t mean that I don’t recognize the legitimate authority of the government to maintain borders. That legitimate authority doesn’t justify attempts to turn this country into a police state.
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Toonces says:
RE the oil “spill”, this is a MUST READ:
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jewellstar3 says:
Well Violet,
I use a product called Midrin for my migraines and it makes it go away in 5 minutes if I take it at onset. I have found that the repeated intake of cheese or gluten will give me migraines and so having avoided those products for years I haven’t had a headache in years. Last month I indulged repeatedly in the gooey stuff and found that Midrin still works, after all is said and done.The elephant in the room is over-population. And the most effective, way to lower population growth is to educate girls and women. So maybe if we were nicer to those brown people and let them go to our shitty schools, we could make a difference in world.
Back to the banana metaphor. According to scientific tests, creatures that are contained into a tight living space become violent to each other and rather crazy in general. I think that our over-crowded world is making people react to things that they don’t even realize. The unconscious ones are just out hating by way of reaction. And the conscious ones are freaked out about the influx of large families of brown people into their neighborhoods. The truth is, that will happen. It’s inevitable. So say the population scientists. It seems that we will all be cutting our bananas in half.
And yes, the fear of “Other” is huge in this issue because there is a “him or me” attitude that feels very much like a showdown in a very small, locked room. The xenophobes see it that the end is near so it’s life and death for them. They are panicked. I don’t know how other people feel, but I know that talking someone off the ledge takes a skilled practitioner of the psychic arts and our politicians seem more invested in having them jump.
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propertius says:
Toonces @ 8:
This one’s pretty interesting, too:
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naomi dagen bloom says:
Wish I could write/think so clearly–and I never have migraines. Thanks for the clarity!
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kk says:
I think people get concerned when there is a large influx of any people…. “othering” is not color dependent and it is annoying to see the tag ‘brown’ people… the tag seems to be used to ‘other’ dissenting voices… context seems to be lost… as for compassion.. that applies both way don’t ya think
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Violet Socks says:
Dear god, please let’s not have another episode of You Just Lack Compassion For My Lack Of Compassion. It’s on the same channel as You’re Just Being Intolerant Of My Intolerance.
Also: please learn to use periods, commas, and other punctuation marks.
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Violet Socks says:
The elephant in the room is over-population.
I agree, except I wouldn’t call it an elephant in the room, since I’m happy to tell anyone who will listen that there are way too many people on this planet. By an order of magnitude.
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Swannie says:
Violet … it isn’t that I am “tired of racism” , I am just weary of racism getting all the attention when I feel so strongly that sexism and misogyny are more of a problem , far too acceptable as a cultural norm , and do far more damage . But the damage sexism and misogyny do happens women ,
so it somehow “doesn’t count as much , if at all.
Sexism is like carbon monoxide , deadly ,silent and invisible ……..
I don’t support reparations over all but if I did it would be for women . yes , reparations for women for all of the lost wages, lost opportunities and damages? Lets tally that ….lets march for that . -
votermom says:
Violet, for some people migraines (which are a form of vascular headaches, after all) correlate to too much or too little iron & red blood cells in the blood. So if you get a lot of migraines, it may be worth getting a blood count one of these days to find out.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15315532 -
gxm17 says:
As a woman who looks ethnically ambiguous, my perspective is that of the permanent outsider. My experience is that one of the first things people want to do when they meet you is categorize you. It’s human nature. We’re pack animals. Our brains insist on questioning whether or not someone is in our pack and what their status is. Bananas are a secondary concern.
That said, I’m not sure that it’s accurate to paint all supporters of the AZ law as racist. Clearly there is a racist factor as racism has suffused every aspect of our culture, but I think the AZ law is tapping into a xenophobic element. Yes, there’s the “melting pot” myth that Americans like to tell themselves but the truth is that our history shows a deep contempt for immigrants, legal or illegal. The largest mass lynching in American was of Italian immigrants. That’s our history, that’s who we are, though we’d like to feign otherwise.
I’m with Swannie @ 15. Get rid of patriarchy and its inherent misogyny and we will have won the racism battle.
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jewellstar3 says:
I apologize for the random comma. I was horrified when I just saw it. I checked and double checked my copy, but those elusive little buggers can hide.
Of course we want to get rid of patriarchy, but the question of racism still remains. I venture to say that if we were in an overcrowded matriarchy, we would experience the same exclusionary behaviors, because those behaviors are designed by our chemistry to keep enough bananas on the tree for ourselves and our near and dear. I see it as survival at its most visceral level.
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Swannie says:
jewellstar, I agree that racism is one of the unsolved problems of our not evolved far enough species, but I think modern racism is largely taught . To children , because they don’t seem to know it … if they don’t learn it.
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jewellstar3 says:
That’s a very good point! Like those white supremacist camps for small children. Yikes.
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Violet Socks says:
Sorry, jewellstar3, it wasn’t you with the punctuation issues. It was k…k…
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Violet Socks says:
Our brains insist on questioning whether or not someone is in our pack and what their status is. Bananas are a secondary concern.
I think you have it backwards. Bananas — food, survival — are primary. Specific behaviors have evolved in service of that. You don’t have to be conscious of it.
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jewellstar3 says:
I think we are talking nature/nurture here. We do learn bigotry, no doubt. But we also react unconsciously. Being sentient, we try to justify our biological reactions with dogma, belief and many forms of irrational gobble de gook. We think we are so high in the Cosmic Jewish Zombie’s eyes, when in fact, we are beasts, jealously guarding our territory.
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gxm17 says:
Violet, with all due respect, I don’t agree with the premise that overpopulation and food supply are the underlying causes of racism. When food is in limited demand, perceived fraternity falls apart. As human history reveals, brother will kill brother when faced with scarce resources. As for overpopulation, racism well precedes it.
It’s interesting to note that in Haiti, after the earthquake, rescue workers were giving the food supplies to women because the women were willing to share the food. The men weren’t. “Our experience around the world is that food is more likely to be equitably shared in the household if it is given to women,” WFP spokesman Marcus Prior said at the stadium, now a sprawling encampment of families left homeless by the quake. Men won’t even feed their own. Racism isn’t about bananas, it’s about an overdeveloped pack mentality which could easily be argued is a byproduct of patriarchal social structures. But you’re right, I shouldn’t have minced words. I should have said, simply, that bananas are not part of the racism equation.
For the record, in response to jewellstar3 @ 18, I am a lover of chaos and asymmetry. The patriarchy/matriarchy polarity ideal is not my thing. I’m not knocking it, it just doesn’t appeal to my sense of balance. A call to end patriarchy should not necessarily be construed as a call for matriarchal control. Replacing one system of exclusion with another seems rather pointless to me.
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Kiuku says:
gxm, I think racism will just go on forever. Like all things. Because it’s a loop. And I wish people could escape racism. Maybe they can, but it’s a give and take world. It’s no ones fault. There’s only 80 or so years in a lifetime, so it’s not that bad.
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Nessum says:
While I was pondering this question and reading comments (my answer: For some reason a feeling of superiority over those with darker skin than yourself. Go figure!) I also started thinking about the equivalent terms used about women and gays. “Misogyny” is hate of women. “Homophobia” is fear of gays. While “racism” at face value is more – neutral.
(Have no idea where I’m going with this. Am still pondering the very existense of bigotry.)
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Besom says:
I’m all for open borders. This freakish fear of strangers is mental illness.
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Violet Socks says:
Violet, with all due respect, I don’t agree with the premise that overpopulation and food supply are the underlying causes of racism.
My premise is that the underlying cause of racism is our animal nature, which evolved to maximize our access to food and reproductive opportunities. In our simian brains, that involves habitation in small groups of known relatives/friends/confederates, and antagonism towards potential rivals.
Overpopulation is a relative term. For a group of 30 gorillas, a 31st gorilla could represent overpopulation. Competition for food supply and overpopulation within a given resource area are as old as life on earth.
You’re mixing up terms so much here that I really don’t know what you’re saying. But if your argument is that racism has nothing to do with our animal nature, I would certainly question that.
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Briar says:
A small silver lining: racist scum in Britain got nowhere in Thursday’s general election. They even lost seats, while watching the loathesome Nick Griffin come in third in Barking was an especial pleasure. Pity he is still my MEP. By the way, I think a proximal cause of the current surge in racism has to do with the neoliberal consensus. Unrest is stirred up because of housing and job shortages, which it is easy to blame on newcomers. But the real cause is a critical failure to invest in social infrastructure and jobs in the community, while the profits of the financial sector are creamed off into the capitalist elite’s deep pockets. The lice even refuse to pay tax on them: they employ (at costs which may be higher than the potential tax owed) armies of accountants and lawyers to avoid paying tax even at the ludicrously low rates set. Haging on to “our” money is their only principle. If they are challenged on their democratic responsibility to society they spew rubbish about single mothers, shiftless workers and depraved sexual practices instead.
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someofparts says:
I’m old enough to have gone to public school in the South during the decade when the state defied the Supreme Court and kept schools segregated. Despite such handicapped beginnings, me and those I’ve grown up with have worked all our lives to get past the racism our communities tried to instill in us when we were defenseless youngsters.
When I thought back, asking myself which moments I could remember as the points when things began to change, it was always when there was actually a chance to meet across the divide as real people, with real faces. Once the “other” becomes a person to you, someone with a face, a name, a story … well… at first it feels like nothing has changed. Feels like you just met a new person. No big deal.
It feels that way right up until the next time someone says something racist. Something you have heard all of your life. But now, this time, when you hear that racial slur, instead of picturing some anonymous mass of people, you picture that new friend, that person you just met.
And then it becomes blindingly obvious even to souls struggling to overcome years of mis-education. You can hear the hate and the insult in the racist remark. You hear it and then picture the black person you just met. Most likely someone nice, someone bright. And the travesty of using a hateful slur to lie about decent people suddenly becomes all to clear.
Anyway, that’s how it happened for me.
