Puh-leassse.
May 8th, 2008“I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on,” she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article “that found how Sen. Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me.” “There’s a pattern emerging here,” she said. (USA Today)
Latoya Peterson over at Racialicious has a great analysis of this comment. It’s true that Clinton has some (marginal?) advantage amongst white working class voters. That means she may be better qualified to compete for the white, working class vote in the general election. If that’s all she was trying to say, I think it’d be a pretty uncontroversial comment.
But that’s not the conclusion she is trying to reach. She is trying to make a point about the breadth of her coalition and therefore her electability as compared to Obama’s. As Peterson points out:
It doesn’t matter that Barack has more delegates and Clinton and Obama are neck and neck in the popular vote. No, fuck that. He still isn’t electable. The white vote is important, but it is not a monolith. But that doesn’t seem to matter. Obama will lose white votes (despite showing more than respectable numbers) and that alone should show us that he’s not electable. (Latoya Peterson)
Peterson also points to this quote from dnA over at Too Sense, which I think sums up Clinton’s intentions (conscious or not) quite well:
This kind of comment is less a description than an agitator, it’s meant to give white voters the impression that they would be “disenfranchised” by an Obama win. It’s a not so subtle effort to evoke racial resentment over Obama’s success. (dnA)
John F. Berger wanted to “have sex” with 100 women. Unable to find any women who would “have sex” with him, he began drugging and raping women. He was apparently close to his goal of raping 100 women when he drugged and raped Tressa Gross.
On August 18th, 2006, a group of black lesbians
May 1st, 2008 at 4:38 am
If I’ve missed the point, I apologize.
White people don’t have a monopoly on racism. They aren’t even more racist than other races. Racism is built into the human brain. We work by making generalizations, and an unavoidable aspect of this is overgeneralization. Spreading activation and what have you. The most any of us can do is train ourselves to think more rationally. (That’s not to say it’s futile, of course.)
I don’t think you’ve explicitly stated that only white people are racist. But, the implication is that racism is inherently a problem with white people. More concerning, this implies that there are important, fundamental differences between the cognition of white people and that of everyone else.
To say that you’ll never understand racism because you’re white and can’t be targeted rings false to my ears. I guess you’ve never had anyone tell you only white people are racist.
May 2nd, 2008 at 1:46 am
When I look around, in the places where I have lived and in the circles where I move, racism is not seen as a “particularly bad” issue. Let me put it this way. There exists, in virtually every society, “heightism”. Taller men are much more likely to succeed career-wise, to enjoy high status, and to impress women. A similar effect holds for women, but it is usually average or somewhat tall women who do better, not very tall women. Now, heightism has many things in common with racism, but not very many people are interested in correcting it, for a few reasons.
Firstly, it is frequently unconscious and therefore difficult to correct. Many people don’t even realize they’re doing it; some maybe even think they are “height-blind”. Secondly, there are so many other problems that are so pressing. Why champion heightism rather than racism, sexism, ___ism, or non-discrimination-based societal ills? Thirdly, there is nothing spectacular about heightism. There is not much stunning history, nor spectacular displays of height bigotry. Only in those rare cases where some person is so short as to be deformed does the story become interesting to most people.
Now, any form of discrimination, as it is corrected more and more, eventually fits these three conditions. You hit diminishing returns, where you have to fight harder and harder to even be visible, much less to make progress. As new generations spring up, you distance people more and more from the original justifications for discrimination, and at the same time from the struggle to fight that discrimination.
So the important question, for most people, becomes not “does ___ism exist?” but “do we have a pressing need to correct ___ism?” People don’t just avoid conversations about racism because they are worried about the criticism of white people (although I agree that that effect exists). People avoid conversations about racism because of the suggestion that they have a moral obligation to /do/ something or /worry/ about what they initially are unconcerned about, and most people tend to do it regarding any form of discrimination they haven’t experienced.
Go talk to people about some international issue, one that involves lots of people in hideous distress. If you want them to agree about how bad it is, you might find it easy to find allies. When you try to recruit people to do something, however, you are competing both with their own personal/familial/social/career needs, but also with every other evil they have ever been told happens in the world, and with every other noble cause they can think of. And it’s not just time you compete for, but also attention, and ranking in the moral scheme of the universe. Which is worse in the world, AIDS or hunger? Which is worst in the US, treatment of blacks or hispanics or the poor or homeless or women or gays or Muslims? Which should I care about enough to think about? Which should I be actively involved in correcting? A lot of the time it’s easier to believe that the problem does not exist, or else that /I personally/ can’t fix it, than that there’s one more bad thing in the world that I’m not caring about.
Now, I’m not a stranger to discrimination. I am bisexual, although not many people I work or go to school with know. Not because I’m really in the closet, but because I’m introverted and not many of them know anything at all about my personal life. Also, much of my extended family takes a dim view of non-Christians such as myself (Buddhist, roughly), and in their view gays deserve every moment of the hellfire they’ll endure. Enough said.
While luck and recessive genetics gave me blond hair, my father shows clearly his Native American heritage, in both skin and face. He encountered a number of problems, including from officials and police in Texas, and one coworker, unwilling to accept that he wasn’t European, somehow convinced herself that he was a very tan Italian. I’ve also gotten comments like “he doesn’t look like you” (in the hope that I’ll explain that I was adopted, or that he’s my stepfather?). Also funny looks or odd comments about my last name from people who’ve not met my dad, though usually no direct questions on how I came by it.
Not to mention my own problems in trying to promote gay rights (or GLBT rights, or whichever conglomeration you prefer). Last week my Constitutional Law professor explained an essay I’d written about same-sex marriage and the Fourteenth Amendment, and asked for discussion. There were thirty people in the class. I was the second of three people that he singled out in this way during that period. The other two (the first had written about Guantanamo Bay, the third about the status of illegal immigrants) had 5-10 minute discussions with the rest of the class, a number of questions regarding research, etc. I was met with dead silence. I am certain that there were people in that class, confident and extroverted people, who vehemently disagreed or agreed with me, but no one wanted to talk about gay marriage because a) they didn’t want to meet with opposition, or b) they did not believe either way strongly enough to commit themselves publicly. There’s also some effect where some people think too much about the “sex” in homosexual, and so won’t talk about it publicly. And this irritates me, because I would have gotten more out of discussion, even by being verbally attacked by the handful of Focus on the Family fans and homophobes in that class, than I did out of an uncomfortable 45-second silence. The only comment I got was a lame excuse by one of the more conservative women that “It’s such an emotional issue, people can’t talk about it in terms of the constitution” (missing the point of a law class, I think).
Now, I think there ways of dealing with this sort of problem, but it’s not to call people out for dodging the issue. You have to connect them directly with the problem, so that they can’t deny that it exists. You also have to connect them with the solution. People are turned off not just by the prospect of guilt or condemnation, but also by the idea that they can’t do anything without sacrificing their lives or worldview. Most people really don’t feel like spending 20% of their income to prevent disease in third-world countries, no matter how staggering the effect can sometimes be. Talking about how bad the problem is and how people should fix it gets agreement or denial, and agreement only gets results slowly as generations are replaced. Talking about how /simple/ and vital the solution is, that’s what gets people on board to help you out or change their own habits. The real, full solution may not be so simple, but people that believe that their own part is simple to play, they are more willing to help. 5$ a day can save an African child. That sort of thing.
Anyway, I think I’ve given you at least something to think about. On to other pursuits for now.
May 9th, 2008 at 12:44 am
Alex, you’re right that I didn’t say that only white people are racist. I also never said I can’t understand racism because I’m white in this post. I’m not sure why you’re arguing against points I didn’t make. My guess is that you’re trying to distract from the points that I did make… namely that racism is quite common.
If this were a debate leave it at that, but it’s a blog and you’ve got some interesting thoughts here, so I’ll respond:
White people are in fact responsible for the bulk of the racism that occurs in the US. Note that I distinguish between racism and prejudice. Black people can harbor prejudices, but given the power differentials in this country it’s difficult for them to be racist.
For example, black and white students certainly both harbor prejudices against each other, but it’s not white students who are forced to drop out of college because of racially-motivated hostility.
As to your point about what I can understand… I can say quite confidently I will never understand what it is like to be a black american. I probably won’t ever understand racism to the same extend that a black american can. How are those controversial statements?
Lastly, there ARE fundamental differences between the cognition of white people and black people. Not because of our skin color, but because people treat us differently because of our skin color and that shapes how we think. This also seems uncontroversial to me.
I appreciate your comments calling me out in the past… they’ve been pretty on point. But I don’t see much substance in your arguments here.
May 9th, 2008 at 12:48 am
Sean, thanks for your comment. I appreciate the feedback at the end. I’m not sure Africa really needs our $5 donations. It’s a little sanctimonious, given the other ways we exploit Africa. And I think there’s a time and a place for confrontation, but you’re right that sometimes you need to hold peoples’ hands.
May 9th, 2008 at 5:54 pm
One other tangential comment, as neuroscience is an amateur interest of mine. When you talk about whether or not there are fundamental differences in cognition, you have to think about which definition of “fundamental” you are using. Picking a couple from Merriam-Webster:
“of or relating to essential structure, function, or facts”
“belonging to one’s innate or ingrained characteristics”
These are closer to how a hard scientist would usually use this word, and this sort of fundamental difference is actually an assertion that would be very hard to make without hard data. You would have to find some method of cognition that was very qualitatively different, with very different results, and very little overlap between the two groups. Not just find differences, but ones that are critical to the way a cognitive process works on its most basic level.
Another definition:
“of central importance : principal”
This is a definition a social scientist might use fairly often. It would probably be easy to find “fundamental” differences this way. If you studied racism, you would look at black and white people. If there was any substantial difference in how they viewed racism (and there almost certainly would be), you could call that fundamental.
Although I try not to have any useless pet peeves, I have to admit that this is probably one of them. People like to point out perceived huge differences between people neurologically or biologically, not realizing that at a fundamental (from a hard science/reductionist viewpoint) level, the great majority of processes are almost identical in every healthy human being on Earth (otherwise we wouldn’t all be able to see, remember, interbreed, etc.). Differences may be important for practical reasons, so we see them as these huge things, but they are always vastly outweighed by universals. Which in the end is key, because it’s hard to trust anyone whose psychology is a complete mystery.