from
: http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/pauljacob/2006/05/21/198235.html
By Paul
Jacob
May 21,
2006
If you
are against something, you should know what it is, right?
So why
do today's professional anti-racists have trouble identifying the basic concept
of racism, and why do they keep supporting and encouraging some rather nasty
forms of it — real, degrading, and violent?
I'm
looking at a Web
page perpetrated by the Seattle Public Schools, a page dealing with
"Equity and Race Relations." I'm peering at one definition in
particular:
Racism
The systematic subordination of members of targeted racial groups who have
relatively little social power in the
Apparently,
blacks and Latinos and Native Americans can't be racist. So the next time a kid
of minority color pulls a knife on a white kid, calling him "Whitey"
or worse, we'll know that this wasn't racist. The next time a minority rights
champion flies off the handle and says that all whites are racists, we'll know
that statement isn't itself racist.
How will
we know? Because according to the people who teach our children, only white
people in
Latinos
and Latinas, Burmese, Chinese, Africans, Indonesians — not one member of these
groups is racist. Thanks for the info, Seattle Public Schools.
Crayola
Logic
The idea that only individuals belonging to a culturally dominant group in a
given area can have racist opinions, express racist thoughts, and judge and act
in racist ways, is idiotic on the face of it. That a bunch of educators in the
It
almost makes you wonder about the IQs of the educators. But lack of intelligence
isn't the likely problem. Take a look at this doozy:
Cultural
Racism Those aspects of society that overtly and covertly attribute value and
normality to white people and Whiteness, and devalue, stereotype, and label
people of color as "other", different, less than, or render them
invisible. Examples of these norms include defining white skin tones as nude or
flesh colored, having a future time orientation, emphasizing individualism as
opposed to a more collective ideology, defining one form of English as standard,
and identifying only Whites as great writers or composers.
It's
interesting that of the five examples of "cultural racism," only one
speaks to the usual key identifier of racial categorization: skin color. The
others address ideas and speech patterns and cultural achievements, things that
non-racists wouldn't normally attribute to racial factors at all.
It's
worth remembering that for a "white" person a pinkish hue is
"flesh," just as to a "black" person darker shades of brown
would qualify. It's not racist to call some shade of pink "flesh" if
you yourself are white. Nor is it racist to call "Burnt Sienna"
"flesh" if that crayon is closest to your skin color. In these cases
it's not racist, but apt.
What's
racist is, upon seeing the relativity, to deny to the person of a different skin
the term "flesh" for their color.
Some
white Americans may have been a bit shocked to witness Crayola change the names
of one of its crayons, back in the '60s, but it would have been racist for the
company, upon noticing that their "flesh" didn't fit a huge segment of
their clientele, to continue. "Peach" was more accurate.
Philosophers
like to remind us to distinguish between fact and value. So let's do that here. It
is a fact that "peach" is closer to the color of my flesh, or
skin, than is "Burnt Sienna." It is also a fact that
"peach" is nowhere near the color of Walter
Williams's skin. Most of us can see the relativity of the terms, and most
Americans have outgrown this issue.
But what
of the facts involved in, say, the question of a great composer?
I'm more
likely to listen to James Brown than Beethoven, but I'm not going to try to make
the case that James Brown was the greater musician. The everyday values that
determine our personal preference differ from our appreciation of greatness in
art. And I don't let race have anything to do with my judgments
of preference.
Or
"greatness."
I have
friends who love Schubert and Sibelius — and Mozart, and more of that crowd
— and who don't place one Asian or African-American composer on their list.
Does this make them "culturally racist"? No.
Music
evolved to greatness as a fine art tradition in Europe, not south of the Sahara
or in the wilds of the
The
RZA and the Duke
have written some amazingly good music, but I doubt if even they aspired to
compose on the level of, say, Bach.
The very
idea makes my head hurt so much I'll probably turn on Top 40 Radio.
That's
the Way the Crayon Crumbles
That "individualism vs. collectivism" example in the "cultural
racism" definition suggests the likeliest source of the
These
seemingly well-meaning numbskulls obsess over two things: racism against
non-whites, and the continued economic success of those who adopt the standards
of civilization that evolved largely in
Now,
racism is indeed vile, especially in its extreme forms. But it's been practiced
by nearly every group throughout human history. And it was in the West that
there arose an ideology that opposed this racism. That ideology was . . .
individualism!
Racism
is, after all, a rather thickheaded collectivism. Like all
collectivisms, it tries to make an individual's belonging or "not
belonging" to one group or another the most important thing about that
individual. In this case, what's seen as most relevant is what is most obviously
seen: skin color, color of eyes, jaw structure, etc.
Individualism,
however, promotes the notion that what a person does and says
is more important than "where he comes from" or "who were his
parents" or "his skin color." (Please pardon my
"sexist" use of masculine pronouns; female public school teachers
taught that to me.)
What
most troubles the professional class of self-selected, self-designated — and
politically appointed — anti-racists in America is that most of the
individuals hurt (at one time or another) by racism in America come from groups
and cultures that did not develop individualism. They want to "defend the
underdog," so they take up the underdog's cultural background as if it were
a part of his race . . . even though the anti-racist's own definition of racism
precludes that ploy: "People of one race can vary in terms of ethnicity and
culture." And yet, they assign to race a cultural trait: the morality of
individualism for whites, the morality of collectivism for Africans, for
example.
But in
doing so these anti-racists keep coming back to that racist idea that an
individual's life and values are determined by his biology, and that individuals
don't "vary in terms of ethnicity and culture." If a person hails from
a collectivist hunter-gatherer tribe — five generations back as opposed to
fifty-five generations back — they seem to think it somehow wrong and racist
to expect this person to behave in an individualistic fashion here in America.
They
ignore the big truth: individualist morality is color-blind on principle;
collectivism isn't. And the individualistic standards we use to criticize racism
also condemn some forms of collectivism. Either our professional anti-racists
haven't figured this out, or they lack the courage to stand up for
race-independent morality.
And
that's how they can go so far as to turn a blind eye to some real instances of
racism, while calling other values racist that aren't racist at all.