House of Eratosthenes

University of Connecticut professor Jack Dovidio, who has researched racism for more than 30 years, estimates up to 80 percent of white Americans have racist feelings they may not even recognize.

“We’ve reached a point that racism is like a virus that has mutated into a new form that we don’t recognize,” Dovidio said.

He added that 21st-century racism is different from that of the past. “Contemporary racism is not conscious, and it is not accompanied by dislike, so it gets expressed in indirect, subtle ways,” he said.

I don’t have any questions for the egghead; I have questions for the other twenty percent. Give me five minutes of Q&A with each of them and I’ll jack that eighty percent figure all the way to the top. Then give me the same five minutes with people who aren’t white, I’ll demonstrate they could be called “racists” too.

It’s all in how you define the R word. We don’t do it; we don’t define it. Which is odd, considering that the meaning of the word is all-important to the importance of the article and everything in it. A definition, therefore, is all-important. Do you go by the dictionary definition of the word? The dictionary is confused. The dictionary says racism is “a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one’s own race is superior and has the right to rule others.” Verticality must therefore be involved. But wait! The dictionary also says racism is “discrimination or prejudice based on race.” Discrimination OR prejudice…not AND. Discrimination, in turn, is “to note or observe a difference; distinguish accurately: to discriminate between things.“ Okee dokee — no verticality involved. Simply observing, and reacting to, the difference in races makes you a racist. In fact the reaction isn’t necessary. If you aren’t color-blind you are a racist, or at least you could be.

Thing I Know #165 is “A word has a definition not when you can look it up in a dictionary, but when there is widespread agreement about what it means. There is no definition for the word ‘racist.'” There is NO definition. We don’t agree about what that word means. We don’t even agree enough about what it means, to use it in conversation — which, I would point out, we do all the time. Try this. Just try it…find someone who has disagreed with you, sometime in the last five years, on an issue involving race. Just ask them to define racism for you. You will be shocked at the answer. Shocked. You may even find out you don’t disagree on the issue like you thought you did, or at least, your disagreement is legitimately rooted in differences in your backgrounds. And yet seldom does anyone take the time to define the word.

Here’s a great question for a non-racist. Let’s say Michael Richards apologized for that silly outburst thing. Again. You’re at home watching the boob-tube, and Michael Richards made yet another apology for his outburst, this one somehow more fascinating than the other apologies. You go to work and you want to talk about the apology with someone. Or…you don’t care, but when you go get some coffee there are people in the breakroom talking about the latest apology. And you happen to have an opinion about it yourself. You think something needs to be pointed out and you don’t see it being pointed out, so you want to share it.

Are you going to select the points you want to make based on who is within earshot? Maybe modify it in some way, re-word it somewhat, show some “good judgment” about what to leave unsaid?

Would you feel uncomfortable if you made your comments in front of a monochromatic group of people — whatever that one color may be — and you turned around, and noticed a person of different color was listening in? Would you be wondering, perhaps, how long he had been listening?

Racist. You’re changing your behavior based on the skin color of those around you. Such a person would have to qualify for the definitions, above, at least as solidly as anyone else. And by the way, anyone answering “no” to the above is a liar.

Or, a dick. I mean, think about it. You’ve got something to say, and common sense would tell you that because of the color of someone’s skin, maybe the things you have to say would be viewed in a different context. Maybe, because of a person’s background and some things they experienced that other people did not experience, some of the things you have to say could be construed as hurtful. People of different backgrounds, after all, don’t look at things the same way. You don’t care? You’re going to, for the sake of being color-blind, just go ahead and say what you’ve got to say even thought it might make someone feel bad? That’s being a dick.

So you see this bizarre dichotomy we’ve got going on. We’re not supposed to discriminate — which, over the years, has come to have nothing at all to do with depriving people of opportunity. It has more to do with simply noticing differences and reacting to them. But then we’re supposed to be sensitive. In fact if you’re insensitive, we’ve come to agree, you should realize the limits of your existence fairly low to the ground. Positions of authority should be cleansed of “insensitive” people.

So don’t discriminate. But be sensitive. Be sensitive. Don’t discriminate.

Those are polar opposites. You can’t do both.

And so, the one thing you can do that shows the most common sense, is to act like “management.” Just stay out of it. Have no opinion.

And that may be the most racist thing you can do. Without a doubt, that kind of behavior has contributed to the friction that’s been going on through the years. We’re supposed to have a problem; we’re supposed to work on solving it; we aren’t allowed to even think about it. How much potential can possibly exist for solving any problem at all?

I wanna be an egghead who studies racism, I think. Looks like some great job security. Everyone’s supposed to be concerned about it, and nobody has any documented standards or guidelines about what it is exactly…nor is anyone allowed to jot any down. That would be — you-know-what.

No really, it would. A lot of people define “racism” as “failure to support the political movements I think should be supported.” And to actually define it in writing, in any way at all, would be to define a goal. If you define a goal, you can either reach it, or create a circumstance where it has to be re-defined in order to be reached. You reach the goal of getting rid of “racism,” in whatever way you define it, and the race struggle stops…and a lot of people don’t want the struggle to stop. Too many people have their careers tied to it. It’s not that they want racism to hang around forever — they want the struggle to hang around forever.

So the word remains undefined. As, I would argue, no other word remains similarly undefined. Nobody knows what this word means, and nobody’s going to sit down and create a concrete definition for it. Yet here we are reading articles about such-and-such-percent of us believe in this thing nobody wants to define. Go figure.

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Eighty Percent?Wednesday, December 13th, 2006

Eighty Percent?
Wednesday, December 13th, 2006