Symbols: Painful Denotations

RVCBard highlights some epic stupidity (via this one). Yup, that's what racism and ignorance look like. Not much to say that doesn't fall under "WTF" and "Fire Her."

I did notice RVCBard's note at the end:

Now I'm just waiting for the day when "God Hates Fags/Dykes" posters aren't homophobic and hateful, but ironic. Funny, even.

I have to say, personally, one of the greatest mysteries that never got solved for me when I was in Europe is, why is the Swastika a symbol of everything that is evil and hate-filled, and the Hammer and Sickle is just an amusing bauble of a by-gone era? It's not because Hitler was more evil or more crazy than Stalin -- I mean, whether or not one wins over the other, they both concentrate practically lethal amounts of murder, hatred, and paranoia. It's not because of time -- Hitler is more distant in memory than the excesses of the Soviet Union (which was rounding up people and invading nations even until the 1980s.

And I mean, it's the same for me. I must admit that I am not offended by the hammer and sickle -- I have the odd ironic t-shirt.

And it's not the I'm-Jewish-so-Nazism-affects-me-more-directly thing; after all, most of my family was wiped out by the Polish and Russian pogroms, whereas they largely avoided the Holocaust. It's not an American bias either -- in the Czech Republic, you can still buy Soviet hats and military garb, whereas if you tried to find a street vendor to sell you Nazi paraphernalia -- good luck.

I'm at a loss to understand why, universally, swastika = ARGH and hammer/sickle = meh. Was it Gorbachev? Did he mystically rehabilitate the hammer/sickle by letting the USSR end with a whimper rather than a bang?

So I don't know if we'll ever be able to laugh about God Hates Fags. There was a short period where the KKK was supposedly laughed at after being used in a children's radio show of Superman (although Wikipedia is not convinced), but this lady's numb-nutted behavior notwithstanding, a burning cross remains not a punchline.

Of course, with some effort, you can still have a Producers-style laugh at White Supremacy's expense. Here's Esquire quoting Neo-Nazis who endorse Obama:

"White people are faced with either a negro or a total nutter who happens to have a pale face. Personally I’d prefer the negro. National Socialists are not mindless haters."

Diversity XXI: Race in the Theater. Or rather, Race in Conversation

Not much I can say on the subject except:

Part 1 - RVCBard

Part 2 - Thomas Garvey

Part 3 - 99 Seats

There's a lot of rage out there. A few brief thoughts:

1. Thomas Garvey says: "But please, try to skip the temptation to continue the "ongoing dialogue." Let's not "dialogue" anymore - let's just bring city services to Roxbury instead, okay? Let's just pass national healthcare. Let's improve education. Let's move forward."
   
   
   Sorry - you can't stop a dialogue, unfortunately. There will always be a dialogue about race. That's just the way it goes.
   
   
2. 99 Seats says: "Did I mention fuck you? Because, if I didn't, hey, pal, fuck you."
   
   
   It's a tough conversation we're having, and I believe you're pissed. And you make some good criticisms of Mr. Garvey. Imagine how much more powerful that post would be if it wasn't lost in a sea of fucking.
   
   
3. The part of RVCBard's original post that start all of this: "In contrast, my experiences with White people have been confusing, uncomfortable, frustrating, and exhausting in this regard. I can't quite put my finger on why, but I always feel a kind of pressure to perform around White people. It's like I have to prove I'm worthy of their presence. It's proven very difficult to get a White person's attention, especially a White man's. It's even harder to maintain it for more than about 15 minutes. And if you're White, and you met me in person, I'm probably talking about you."
   
   Time for some carefully chosen words.
   
   Well, as someone who I guess is white (half-African doesn't count for me because it's Jewish African... anyways) sometimes it is confusing, uncomfortable, frustrating, and exhausting for the White People too. That's what Chris Matthews was talking about. NOT THAT I AGREE WITH WHAT HE IS SAYING. But Matthews has been told a lot that he's racist (because sometimes he is), and he doesn't want to be, so he's relieved for a moment to escape that confusing, uncomfortable, frustrating, and exhausting feeling.
   
   If you've read good books on this subject like Blink or a million others, you understand that there's a difference between what I usually call hard racism, where like Strom Thurmond you actually believe that one race is better than all others and it should be raised to the top, or soft racism, which can either be stupidity/ignorance like Chris Matthews or institutional and unconscious.
   
   There's a study that shows that blind auditions can greatly improve the diversity of an orchestra. This is not a proof of hard racism -- it's a proof of soft racism. The problem is that seemingly open-minded people may, inadvertently, through tricks of their own unconscious mind, wind up mis-evaluating different applicants based on their race.
   
   The point is, we White Americans want to bridge this gap. But sometimes, we're going to screw up the way we screw up at a lot of things we want to do.
   
   Why am I rambling on this way?
   
   Well, from our half of the conversation, RVCBard, here's what happens. We show up to a meeting with someone who says that this is a White Supremacist country and is clearly on her guard to smell us out: are we the White man who's playing fair, or are we in the category of racists? And we know that we're open-minded, but we also know that
   
   So we want to be on our best behavior. We're nervous, and self-conscious. Like in sex, the more nervous we get, the less pleasant the experience is, and the more likely we are to screw up. It is, as you put it, "confusing, uncomfortable, frustrating, and exhausting." Then it becomes a Catch-22 -- we're confused, uncomfortable, frustrated, and you're confused, uncomfortable, and frustrated, and the chances we'll try it again are low.
   
   Does this mean I agree with Thomas Garvey, then, that it's Black people's fault, and y'all need to move on?
   
   NO.
   
   Thomas Garvey thinks the way to solve the difficulty of this conversation is to avoid it. It's irritating, and as all three players have demonstrated it can lead to incredible anger. But we can't avoid the conversation. I'm not so concerned about the frustrated/uncomfortable quality of the conversation as I am by the people who get up after 15 minutes.
   
   Part of it is we like to pretend that we're not having the conversation. White people meet Black people but they don't want to be talking about race. I don't like talking about it. And nobody wants our only dialogue to be "hey I'm black you're white let's talk about that" / "hey I'm white I don't really know what you're experience is like." And yet it may be necessary.
   
   

I don't know if I made the point I was trying to make (I thought I only had a few thoughts but it turned out to take a lot of words). I'm nervous to hit "Publish Post" because, well, it's so much easier for me not to post this and for me not to weigh in on this issue.

At least I'm not the only Jew who feels this way:

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Diversity XIII: Comments and Leadership, ctd.

Do you know why this doesn't matter? Because Rod Blagojevich is not the Senate Majority Leader.

Diversity XIII: Comments and Leadership

For the thirteenth, and thusly unlucky, part of the diversity discussion... I give you Harry Reid, ladies and gentlemen!

The authors quote Reid as saying privately that Obama, as a black candidate, could be successful thanks, in part, to his "light-skinned" appearance and speaking patterns "with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one."

The internet is of divided opinion about whether, as Michael Steele demands, Reid should resign. For instance, Ta-Nehisi Coates, who is, not to mince words, an African-American himself and is probably better to judge the level of offensiveness/impact of Reids words -- TNC says this:

I think you can grant that, in this era, the term "Negro dialect" is racially insensitive and embarrassing. That said, the fair-mind listener understands the argument--Barack Obama's complexion and his ability to code-switch is an asset. You can quibble about the "light skin" part, but forget running for president, code-switching is the standard M.O. for any African American with middle class aspirations.

But there's no such defense for Trent Lott. Lott celebrated apartheid Mississippi's support of Strom Thurmond, and then said that had Thurmond won, "we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years.'' Strom Thurmond run for president, specifically because he opposed Harry Truman's efforts at integration. This is not mere conjecture--nearly half of Thurmond's platform was dedicated to preserving segregation. The Dixiecrat slogan was "Segregation Forever!" (Exclamation point, theirs.) Trent Lott's wasn't forced to resign because he said something "racially insensitive." He was forced to resign because he offered tacit endorsement of white supremacy--frequently.

The distinction TNC is making is one I made before in an old post called Hard Racism vs. Soft Racism; actual hate as compared with racial insensitivity:

"Hard" racism is an extreme form of racism. "Hard" racism is holding the belief that one or more races are inferior to one or more races. Adolf Hitler was a hard racist. Racial eugenicists are hard racists. Jim Crow Laws are hard racist laws. They codify the notion that one race of people is objectively (in their eyes) worse than another race of people. People who speak hard racism aloud are tagged, unequivocally, as bigots.

Today, we don't see nearly as much of that. But what we do see is a lot more of "soft" racism. "Soft" racism is hard to define. "Soft" racism is non-absolute; it does not hold that one race is absolutely worse than another. But it has a lot of negative connections with a race. One type of soft racism is ignorance. Another sort of soft racism is resentment.

(...)

[S]oft racism can usually be bridged by better communication, more cooperation, and more information.

TNC is right; what Trent Lott said was hard racism in gloves; the feeling that the Segregationalist candidate (who was definitely a hard racist) should have won is not the same as some outdated and insensitive language.

However.

I do not agree, as Isaac seems to be leaning, and as folks like TNC or Ezra Klein seem to be holding, that Reid shouldn't resign as Majority leader.

Now, let's make a quick distinction: Reid has three choices ahead of him: to step down as majority leader, to step down from the senate, or to apologize and move on. He appears to be taking option three.

Now, Trent Lott took option one. I think what was morally obligated of Trent Lott was to take option two, and resign from the senate completely. He was a bigot, and there should be no room in the Senate for bigots. Strom Thurmond should have been long gone too, but I guess bigots like Lott and Thurmond still represent their states adequately enough for their states' tastes.

I think Reid should take option one. I don't think he did something inexcusable. But when we look to our leadership, we demand something more than just actions that are "excusable." We demand leadership that is to be looked up to -- in fact, that leads.

If these comments reveal anything, it is that Harry Reid is behind the times. And we, as Democrats (if you are a Democrat, that is, o hypothetical reader) should push for a majority leader who best represents where we are now, where we are today.

Obama had a very stirring (for me at least) passage in his book Audacity of Hope where he describes going to meet Senator Robert Byrd who, many years ago, was a white supremacist. Many people told him to snub Byrd and skip the meeting. He went to the meeting, and he got some sort of a pseudo-apology, and Byrd basically acknowledged "I was wrong, I was behind the times." That's very laudable of Byrd to realize. But he's not the man I want leading our party.

Think of it from the perspective of a young, capable black man who might want to run for office. If the Democratic party is willing to tolerate leadership who are insensitive on the issue of race, who are clearly outdated, then we're going to lose some of those talented people, who don't want to be part of an organization that tolerates that. They're not going to feel represented.

And I don't want to hear the phrase "How could they think that -- we elected Barack Obama President." We don't just prove these things once. We have to prove them every day.

As a for instance, when Proposition 8 passed in California, the aftermath claimed the job of artistic director Scott Eckern who had donated to the pro-Prop 8 campaign in accordance with his Mormon faith. I think that was the right choice for the California Musical Theatre. As an organization, they have the choice of leaders to present to the community. They communicate their values as an organization through who they put forward as a "leader."

The word "leadership" means something.

Conversationalism + 2008: Conversations About Race

Required Reading. For this post, and for Life.

That gentleman is the Secretary-Treasurer of the AFL-CIO. I mean, if we're talking about the "blue-collar white man" that allegedly hasn't been out to back Obama in the polls, this is the guy.

But I don't want to talk politics. I want to talk conversation.

Back in the Primary Season, Barack Obama was called to respond to a scandal brewing over Reverend Wright. And he did. But he did something more profound than disavowing Reverend Wright. He talked about our relationship to race in this country.

He summed up his speech in this part of the text, I think:

For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle - as we did in the OJ trial - or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. ...

We can do that.

But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we'll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.

That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, "Not this time."

He was calling on this nation to begin a dialogue, a true conversation about race. That's kind of my gig, and I was thrilled when I saw it. I was going to write something about it, but time slipped away and I let it fall.

And then nothing happened.

There was no discussion of race. We had blundered through a few minor but painful racial gaffes (Geraldine Ferraro, for instance). And at the end of the day, we went back to pretending that there was nothing different about Barack Obama, and that nobody was going to treat him any differently. And that race would not be an issue in this election. For the most part, it won't be. We have advanced a long way, and from the electoral maps I'm seeing right now, it seems fairly likely that Obama will still win.

But the question remains: what about our racial dialogue?

Although the speech I posted at the beginning from the AFL-CIO chief was mostly a stump speech for Obama, I have to tease out two major, major points he made.

• We Cannot Stand By While Racism Happens
  
• Getting Involved Doesn't Mean Accusing People Of Racism; It Means Engaging Them

That's a fantastic basis for the beginning to our conversation about race.

I'm very proud of our country tonight. I'm very proud that we have a man who can make that speech. He is winning no easy medals by bringing up a topic that most people have a much easier time avoiding.

More, America. We need more discussion.

Hard Racism vs. Soft Racism

Our language has simplified over the last generation. Simplified language often leads to simplified thought: thought is, after all, encoded in the logic of language.

So when two phenomenon share the same word, confusion may arise when multiple people misinterpret the same word to mean different things.

This applies to various "isms;" racism, sexisim, ageism, and homophobia (it doesn't end in ism but it's the same sort of sentiment). We use the term racism carefully in this country. But we also throw it around a lot. We have a lot of anxiety about what's termed "racist" and what is not termed "racist." People who use it too much devalue the word; people who use it too little let racists get away with defamation. I'm going to focus on racism right now because Barack Obama invited this nation to have a dialog about race (which has not been followed up on), but this can be applied to sexism as well--that installment is coming soon.

So let me begin by splitting the term 'racism' into two categories: "hard" racism and "soft" racism. Hard racism is a very plain sort of racism, and thus we don't hear it spoken aloud anymore. Ever since the Civil Rights Movement, our culture has decided, as a majority, that it is unacceptable to be a hard racist aloud anymore. This isn't to say that there aren't hard racists; but whenever a statement that is hard racism is heard aloud, that person is pretty much chased out of any public position they might hold.

"Hard" racism is an extreme form of racism. "Hard" racism is holding the belief that one or more races are inferior to one or more races. Adolf Hitler was a hard racist. Racial eugenicists are hard racists. Jim Crow Laws are hard racist laws. They codify the notion that one race of people is objectively (in their eyes) worse than another race of people. People who speak hard racism aloud are tagged, unequivocally, as bigots.

Today, we don't see nearly as much of that. But what we do see is a lot more of "soft" racism. "Soft" racism is hard to define. "Soft" racism is non-absolute; it does not hold that one race is absolutely worse than another. But it has a lot of negative connections with a race. One type of soft racism is ignorance. Another sort of soft racism is resentment.

Barack Obama, in his speech about race, talked about "white resentment," caused by pro-minority actions such as Affirmative Action. It is unsurprising that if one group gets preferential treatment, there will be resentment by the other. And these resentful emotions will spill over into negative attitudes. A hostility; an avoidance.

Now, these people who feel resentment toward African Americans may say that they do not think African Americans are worse, as race. Most probably genuinely believe that. But they do still feel a racial tension which cannot be dismissed as being completely non-racist. And this racial tension, or negative attitude toward African Americans may manifest itself in negative action. And that negative action will be racist, no matter how you dice it.

If both "soft" and "hard" racism are still racisms, why is it important to distinguish? Because soft racism can usually be bridged by better communication, more cooperation, and more information. For instance: affirmative action is only necessary in a community which acknowledges that all of its poor will not get opportunities to education. If a leader brings the white community and the black and latino and asian and etc. communities to work together to improve the opportunities of college education to everyone, then the resentment will decrease.

Hard racism has to be fought. I remain highly doubtful that the Jim Crow laws and segregation could have been ended simply by having Martin Luther King Jr. and Strom Thurmond sitting at a table discussion solutions. Strom Thurmond's belief that the black man was inferior was an ideology; it was entrenched in how he approached the world. And we have no need to give that any time or respect.

The reason is because "hard" racism is an ideology of racism and "soft" racism are facets or actions of racism; the latter being bad, but not as all-encompassing as the first.

Another reason "soft" racism needs to be addressed is that it often causes subconscious soft racism. People who are nervous when black men approach them in the street are exhibiting racism in a way, but it would be ridiculous to put that in the same class as joining the Klu Klux Klan. The imagery and the stereotypes and the cultures which give rise to these soft racisms need to be addressed. They cannot be ignored.

For instance, in the Amadu Dialo case, the officers involved had an ingrained soft-racism; their assumptions were that a black man of a certain age might be violent. And because of it, their reflexes (in under seven seconds; a core part of Malcolm Gladwell's book Blink) led them to shoot a man over 40 times before they could accurately and dispassionately appraise the situation. Do I think they were hard racist--that they think the black man is inferior? No, I don't believe that. But I do believe that they were soft racists; taught to expect trouble from men of a certain description. And although I have only met a few hard racists, I have barely met anyone who doesn't exhibit the occasional sign of "soft-racism" (Exhibit A: "Everyone's A Little Bit Racist" from Avenue Q).

It is important to confront these soft-racisms and make everyone aware when they are going on. Because the conscious mind can overcome subconscious soft-racism, and the conscious mind can address the causes of soft-racism. Unquestioned, they might simply fester, and lead to those cases of hard racism that we want to avoid.

And one last notice: hard racism nowadays masquerades as soft racism; sometimes it is barely detectable. This makes it hard to point to. For instance, I personally detect a hint of hard racism about the McCain campaign's allegation of Obama as "presumptuous" (David Gergen, a Southerner, called it a code-word that everyone in the South would recognize as standing in for uppity). But of course I wouldn't be able to prove it, any more than I can prove that Obama's "out of touch" ad is ageist, the way the McCain campaign alleges it is. When Trent Lott famously said that if they'd elected Strom Thurmond, we wouldn't be in "this mess," did he actually mean that we should have a segregationalist country? It seems pretty clear to me and to most people, but because of this conflation of hard and soft racism, it loses its impact.

Be on the lookout, America.