Atheism
Politics
Memes
Mind
Matters
String
Random
Interact
Feedback
Links
Debate
Home
Politics in Little England
The Race Issue
The great race taboo
How are you ever going to rid the world of obnoxious racism if you cripple the victim?
Think yourself back into the mind of a nasty teenager, it's easy if you try. Your teacher tells you that it is very important that you never make the Jewish boy feel bad by calling him a Jew in a nasty way or talking about what happened under the Nazis because such things are extremely hurtful. You just know what is going to happen don't you? Within seconds of the teacher leaving the room little Haim is surrounded by baying kids with their fingers held under their nose goose-stepping away and asking him whether he vants go to ze showers. That is nothing to do with the fundamental racism of white youths it is simply the nature of teenagers, tell them not to hit below the belt and they'll never hit anywhere else.
Promoting the idea that racial insults are unforgivable is setting people up to fight, it is making the victims of racist taunting vulnerable to the consequences of acting out their now over-inflated righteous indignation. We should get this concept clear in our minds, racist insults are cheap shots designed to provoke a reaction which damages the victim. No white racist is going to stand in the middle of a crowd of black people and start calling them fucking niggers, if he did he would either be beaten up or surrounded by jeering people. He is going to wait until he has the weight of numbers (or the weight of personal physical superiority) on his side. He is looking to provoke an attack which he can then counter attack with superior force or he is looking to see the victim make a humiliating retreat. Isn't there an alternative reaction? Racist taunting is a cheap shot, it is hardly devastating intellectual repartee. So the jerk has revealed he has an irrational hatred of you, that he is an unimaginative small-minded bigot. Why should you care what he thinks or says?
When people attack me they often try to be deliberately hurtful and in so doing show themselves to be small-minded hateful people whose opinions count for significantly less because they have tried to be hurtful. The jerk's just called me fat, that's probably something to do with me being overweight isn't it? Oh how amazingly inventive and perceptive the bloke is. Why should I give him the satisfaction of being affected by his taunt? I don't need to be liked by everybody, it doesn't actually hurt me at all if somebody doesn't like me or even hates me. The opinions of an obnoxious individual are not about to get me to change my perceptions of my own value. Of course I feel angry with them but I also think less of them.
Goading somebody is offensive and aggressive behaviour. It is not worse or better that the goading is about your race, your hair colour, your religion, your sexuality, your body shape, your job, your accent, your political opinions, your taste in music, your sporting affiliations or the sexual habits of yo mama. We should not make race into a special cause which lifts it above any other issue. You can't make people like you. You can't make people not notice something rather obvious about you.
Being a racist cannot be a crime in itself. A person can no more stop being a racist on demand than he could become a Muslim or heterosexual on demand. The law can make racism in business and employment an offence, make discriminating on the grounds of race illegal. This cannot without absurdity and oppression of freedom of choice be extended into private life. A law cannot make a woman date men from all races if she doesn't want to and there can be no right to complain on the grounds of illegal racism that you don't get invited to a party or to eat your lunch at a table of people who don't like you because of their racism.
It is hard to distinguish exactly when voluntary segregation of races stops being just one of those things and starts to be part of a system of oppression, if ever. If you look at any school in the world you will see segregation into voluntary membership groups. There will be the girls table, the boys table, the Ashleys' clubhouse, the jocks corner, the geeks table, the T Bird's table and so on. How is this considered to be perfectly normal and understandable and relatively healthy whereas the existence of “the white tree” in Jena is not? Why is an unofficial voluntary segregation by sex or lifestyle choice acceptable but a voluntary unofficial racial segregation seen as a relic of an evil time of bigotry and hatred and an unforgivable personal affront to the excluded? I suggest that an excessive focus on racism has created an issue, making a conflict between groups of teenagers into a symbol of something much bigger.
It is perfectly understandable that pale skinned whites would want to shelter under the shade of a tree. It is also understandable that the students would want to divide up into groups along racial lines because they have different cultures, interests, musical tastes, sporting heroes and their parents attend different churches. It would be amazing and somewhat freakish if the voluntary social groups at that school were largely mixed.
The existence of groups is natural, that they would divide along racial lines is also natural because these are also fault lines for different cultures. The clear solution to this problem is that the school needs more trees. With only one tree it is inevitable that eventually the group not “in possession” of the tree would give rise to an individual who would see the tree as a symbol of racial oppression. It is also entirely predictable that an encroachment upon “their territory” would be repulsed with a show of defiance. Now put yourself into the shoes of those white students, how would you show your defiance of an interloping black upon the territory of you Southern whites in such a way as it doesn't get you beaten up or excluded from school by having a stand up fight. Hmmm. Tree. Uppity black dude. Louisiana. Hostile gesture to mark his card without being seen. Tree. Louisiana. No, sorry. No matter how long I think about this only one thing springs to mind. Yes of course it could be construed as “a thinly veiled death threat” and a terrible reminder of a raw and bitter recent past. Yeah yeah yeah. It is also just some kids tying a few pieces of rope to a tree when nobody is looking. It is not beating anybody up or depositing the severed head of a racehorse in their bed while they sleep. And if you do make an honest attempt to see things from their point of view I hope you will be able to grasp that the more liberals wail and bleat and make out that racism is the ultimate horror the more likely it is that their first choice of weapon to hurt any black person will be dripping with racist symbolism and hollow threats of violence. If your intention is to cause maximum hurt and fear with minimal effort and personal risk then nothing else offers as good a return on your investment than to anonymously make a gesture that is reminiscent of lynching. What other move makes sense?
A cheap gesture that hints of a huge threat while in reality being nothing of the sort is common human behaviour. I have a reasonable level of certainty that as I write this a Russian heavy bomber is flying towards me on a course which is indistinguishable from a bombing run with thermonuclear bombs. I really don't give a shit. If their intention was hostile it is vital that this formidable aircraft is met and destroyed. An RAF Eurofighter Typhoon will be scrambled to intercept. I can guarantee that the pilot of this fighter will not be all fired up as if he was genuinely all that stood between Britain and nuclear annihilation. He knows it's a game. He knows that if he didn't show up the bomber would turn around without making any attempt to drop anything just as if he did. But he will do his bit, just as RAF pilots did throughout the sixties, seventies and eighties. The Russians are using the same planes they did in the sixties. It looks like a deadly confrontation, it is dripping with the symbolism of war but the reality is that the threat is hollow. It is willy waving on both sides.
Dangling pieces of rope from a tree is a nasty action that merits punishment but to see it as a genuine death threat is as naive as imagining that some anonymous RAF pilot has single-handedly saved Britain from annihilation sixteen times last month. What would be a suitable response to such a gesture? Nailing a white voodoo doll to the tree through the heart. Theatrical stereotype-confirming mock threat matched by theatrical stereotype-confirming mock threat.
What's the big story in Jena? The white kids didn't want to play with the black kids. And? What are we going to do to make them want to? Why should we care about it? You can't make people get along. They are visibly distinct and they are living in parallel cultures with a parallel history and parallel aspirations. That means separate, not converging. Bleating on about racism is not going to break down any barriers it is going to formalize and define the differences and label all differences in the performance between the two groups as being the result of racism. That is madness. The two groups have different cultures, different values, different aspirations. It is madness to expect that they will produce identical outcomes or that the only explanations for the differences are either down to genetic superiority/inferiority or endemic racism.
I am not suggesting that keeping quiet about racism will ensure that it goes away but we do know from experience that “confronting it” doesn't really work. Confronting racism and making out that it is the worst thing in the world has clearly not worked. Those who don't want to be forced into thinking in a way they see as alien and oppressive of their culture will reject that way of looking at the world. They will fight for the right to hate and the freedom of thought that they see racism as representing.
The other story in Jena is the story of Mychal Bell, High School football star, man with a criminally violent temper. From reading the bleeding-heart liberal biased accounts of the Jena Six I had started to picture an innocent man pushed too far by extraordinary pressures from a town of racists and racist-apologists. This is nothing like the true picture, a man who attacks his victim from behind, knocking him unconscious with a single blow and kicking and stomping on him while he is down and defenceless, but not even on his own, he did it with at least five accomplices. The victim was not killed and no very serious or long-term injuries were caused but he was severely battered, knocked unconscious and found bleeding from his ears.
Some people have made out that in this picture of Justin Barker he doesn't look too badly beaten. He looks quite badly beaten to me, I never saw anybody ever as messed up in a fight in my school, and you can clearly see evidence of him bleeding from an ear. He was taken away in an ambulance and many onlookers feared he may be dead. How can that be equated with tying some rope to a tree or using “the N word”? No words or taunts could ever justify physical violence on that scale. So he was back on his feet again four hours later, that shows he's got guts not that he was uninjured.
I don't like racists. I really don't. But I want to see racism and racially motivated injustice end rather than feel that I am deeply engaged in a fight against racism. There have been far too many fights already.
By endorsing the view that racism is the supreme unforgivable evil people can be manipulated into over-reacting and so damaging their own interests. Injustice is wrong, it is not more wrong when it is shown to be in the form of racism. Beating the shit out of somebody does not count as self defence against words, even the N word.