rolling "Is This Racist?" thread

deej, that ground has been covered like 100x today itt already.

DJP, that says exactly what I said. There are two forms of bias - personal and institutional. Zach has argued from the beginning of this thread that all racism is institutional.

― Mordy, Friday, January 27, 2012 3:22 PM (34 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

dude you cant seperate systemic from personal like that. when a white person is personally racist against a POC they are using systemic power to make that point

yo i continually recognize the irony of me arguing for multiple definitions, but i don't think there was anything wrong in me saying "institutional racism" and expecting people to not assume i'm talking about exactly what wiki editors use to define it. from my experience, both that usage (ie the institution of the police system) and the one i was referring to (the institution of culture) are equally valid and not all that distinct. it all derives from the institution of our culture and colonial history.

and i don't think everyone here agreed with me and it was all just a semantics confusion. everyone was saying "racism against whites happens" and i was saying "no, whites have the power." if you want to say that racism is built into our culture and it's a part of our lives from birth to death, but you also want to say that racism against whites occurs in our culture, i still disagree.

Deej, I think it's nice that you're interested in this conversation and want to join in but honestly I'm not going to start answering your questions too.

But the thing is, even if it doesn't leave that room, its still perpetuating racism!

Yes, and this is exactly my point. I realize that many people have moments of stupidity where they do/say/laugh at things without considering the greater subtext and that this happens with many sensitive topics (i.e. the jokes in the Joe Paterno thread). What I have a problem with is those who insist things like "if you find a racist joke funny, it's probably because you subconsciously agree with the stereotype", when most people in my generation likely heard these stereotypes through jokes in middle school in the first place!

dog stop posting

Ugh you are just not getting it dude, not at all.

hey frogbs go check out http://implicit.harvard.edu let me know what you learn abt yourself

DJP, that says exactly what I said. There are two forms of bias - personal and institutional. Zach has argued from the beginning of this thread that all racism is institutional.

i'm sorry that i wasn't clearer, but i thought the kwame definition was better-known and that ppl would assume i was using it within the context of everything else i was saying.

you can't be 'racist' against white people because 'white' is just 'something people who are at the top of the racial caste system call each other' -- it's not, like, an ethnicity, or something.

blazing otm, and important when arguing with people who talk about "white pride" but don't consider themselves neo-nazis

Ugh you are just not getting it dude, not at all.

then explain

i guess to be more OTM i should say its what is generally agreed to call people at the top of the racial caste system, a system set up to support the people at the top of it

Zach, Kwame is saying the opposite of what you said. You do realize that, right?

it was important to distinguish personal bias, which has specific effects and can be identified and corrected relatively easily, with institutional bias, which is generally long-term and grounded more in inertia than in intent.

He's not saying that everything is institutional. He is saying the opposite. That we need to distinguish between the two forms.

What I have a problem with is those who insist things like "if you find a racist joke funny, it's probably because you subconsciously agree with the stereotype", when most people in my generation likely heard these stereotypes through jokes in middle school in the first place!

wow so it's almost as if there is a (wait for it)... institutional factor at work in perpetuating racist humor across generations. garsh.

xp

I realize that many people have moments of stupidity where they do/say/laugh at things without considering the greater subtext and that this happens with many sensitive topics (i.e. the jokes in the Joe Paterno thread)

Joe Paterno also completely irrelevant here wtf

Are you racist against Nittany Lions now too?

xp except in the exact way that I mentioned, yeah

no. there is no parallel there.

xp i was talking specifically about his usage of "institutional." separating institutional from personal is something different. but i don't think he's saying that they are unrelated, just that we can't only look at personal racism (esp impt to note in the 60s)

obv i can't speak for him

then explain

This is what multiple people have been doing in multiple threads now, I just don't think you're ever going to get it.

but please to explain what the "greater subtext" is with making fun of a guy who facilitated/perpetuated the abuse of children, I would love to hear it.

xp

ok OFFICIALLY LEAVING NOW to cook for a month-late christmas party, everyone plz redirect your attention to the frog

basically that saying "you're an asshole if you don't consider all the implications of what you're actually laughing at" makes the whole world an asshole

again, what are the implications of laughing at an asshole like Joe Paterno

uh yeah you're pretty much an asshole if you don't consider the implications of what you're actually laughing at

willing to believe that the whole world are assholes

He's not saying that everything is institutional. He is saying the opposite. That we need to distinguish between the two forms.

He is more saying that people are focusing on symptoms and ignoring the root cause.

but please to explain what the "greater subtext" is with making fun of a guy who facilitated/perpetuated the abuse of children, I would love to hear it.

would you be willing to make those jokes in front of the mothers of the children?

http://images.betterworldbooks.com/184/Busy-Baby-Silly-Frog-Thomas-Nelson-9781848796096.jpg

hey frogbs go check out http://implicit.harvard.edu let me know what you learn abt yourself

― tinker tailor soldier sb (silby), Friday, January 27, 2012 4:28 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark

that website is kind of addictive...

oh man I cannot get sucked into that site, I have drinks to go to soon

That's not how I understood him, DJP. In fact, the institutions are described as inert, that their racism (as distinguished from personal racism) lacks intent but just continues patterns of discrimination over years. Ok, I'm running out of steam here. I guess if we still have a disagreement then we'll have to leave it there. I was going to start discussing how racism against 'white people' (by which I really initially meant racism against people whom we might describe as white -- not that white is an ethnicity) exists on a personal level but yes -- emerges from the same paradigms on a societal level that informs all racism. But that in fact the entire human condition is one of Othering - Othering people based on color, language, geographic background, size, etc. Which is not to excuse the systemic repression of POC by white people over centuries but merely to make the point I was trying to make at the very beginning which is that anyone can experience racism, even if everyone doesn't. Blah blah blah Hegel Lacan etc. Honestly tho we've been doing this for hours and I'm tired and getting a little frustrated so... meh.

all racism convos end with "meh" or tears

wait so did we fix racism guys?

would you be willing to make those jokes in front of the mothers of the children?

what mothers

critical difference is that the jokes are about PATERNO not the mothers or the children

Guys I think you're missing frogs' main point. By everybody being racist, we can cause a Sneetches-like ripple effect in our comunity that means only the people not being racist are being racist.

you know, the ones whose sons are scarred for life b/c of what Joe Paterno didn't do?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbud8rLejLM

you know, the ones whose sons are scarred for life b/c of what Joe Paterno didn't do?

my understanding was that many of those kids didn't have families, which is how they ended up with Jerry Sandusky in the first place

frogbs wants to know if you would make those jokes in front of the mothers' graves

but I'm happy to spell out every single little fucking thing for you

xp

frogbs wants to know if you would make those jokes in front of the mothers' graves

"tough crowd, tough crowd"
http://www.zestra.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Rodney-Dangerfield.jpg

to frogbs: It seems from a lot of your posts that one thing you're very concerned about is people considering you an asshole for doing certain things or thinking certain things or laughing about certain things -- things that you may consider to be normative, widespread behavior. The solution to that is either a) Don't care what people think about you, or b) Don't do/say things that make people think you're an asshole. The answer is not, however, c) Try to convince them that the behavior is actually not asshole behavior. That's gonna be a waste of everyone's time.

critical difference is that the jokes are about PATERNO not the mothers or the children

you still wouldn't though, right?

in the same way the race humor I actually do find funny isn't making fun of the people who are that race as much as they are about the people who believe these stereotypes. You know at the end of Harold & Kumar when the police do the sketches of the "fugitives" and they're both drawn as terrible stereotypes? The joke isn't "the Asian guy has buck teeth", it's the idea that someone that a police artist would be ignorant to draw a stereotype that doesn't look anything like the guy they're trying to catch outside of the guy's assumed race

Yeah, frogbs - Shakey made that distinction way upthread IIRC.

thanks for ruining Harold and Kumar

The answer is not, however, c) Try to convince them that the behavior is actually not asshole behavior. That's gonna be a waste of everyone's time.

actually I was going to post about how I'm starting to change my mind to agree with silby's post about how everyone is an asshole (even though he was likely joking around) but I'm starting to get carpal tunnel here

i'm sure that this will read as "fascist" or "whitetarded" to some, but wtf, here goes:

part of the problem with discussions of "racism" is that we (westerners and especially americans) have attached an enormous stigma to the word itself. when our conventional examples of racism encompass institutional atrocities like slavery and the holocaust, to be racist is not just to be wrong, but to be deeply and profoundly wrong. with that sort of moral weight attached to it, racism something very much like "pure evil".

this makes the conventional historical definition of the term (negative prejudice based on race) morally insufficient. individual prejudice can certainly be harmful, but it's also quite ordinary, perhaps even intrinsic to the human condition. whether or not it's race-based, we're all prejudiced to some extent or another. and accusations of virulent evil lose their moral force when they can be applied to all people equally.

therefore, we attempt to justify the awful moral stigma that our awareness of the worst extremes of racist prejudice attaches to the "r-word". we do this by insisting that racism is not mere prejudice based on race, but rather the systemic power that can transform mere individual prejudice into pervasive institutional oppression. while individual prejudice might not be sufficient to justify the moral stigma attached to the word, institutional oppression is.

it's a cart-before-the-horse response, an after-the-fact attempt to justify the moral power we've attached to the word "racism" and also to corral that massive power so that it can only be directed at appropriate targets. unfortunately, this attempted redefinition makes it terribly difficult to speak sensibly of racism. the perfectly useful old definition still persists in conventional usage, and we've hardly reduced the tendency of people to overstate the moral evil of and objective harm caused by simple individual prejudice (of the sort that isn't necessarily reflective of institutional racism).

that's why i prefer the phrase "institutional racism" which describes something that very clearly does deserve all the moral opprobrium we can muster. unfortunately, this division robs plain old ordinary "racism" of some of its moral force. it becomes something smaller than and distinct from the oppressive exercise of institutional power, and at that point, it seems to become a venal rather than a cardinal sin.

it is true that it's very important that we make sure the word "racism" isn't too offensive to people

Yeah, frogbs - Shakey made that distinction way upthread IIRC.

right, all I'm saying is that one version of this is not particularly harmful