What makes you think you're not a racist?

[Lateralthinking1]

.....Racism is often alleged where certain forms of speech, behaviour and opinion emanate so frequently out of prejudice that shorthand communicators are quite unable to see that prejudice doesn't always have to be behind them.

Being against a high level of immigration is a case in point. At one time this was seen as unequivocally racist to the point of being unmentionable. However, the debate has broadened a little recently to take on board some of the logistical arguments.

Use of language develops in a series of tests to define boundaries of acceptability. At one time the "n" word would have been regarded as disgusting. After some playing around with that rule, society concluded that it was acceptable but only if uttered by black people in whose hands it could even be an affirmative word.

Polite whites would often choose the word "coloured" in the sixties but they were subsequently instructed that this was deeply offensive. So many of us chose "black" and "Asian" but one senses that there are now greater sensitivities with "black". Arguably, there is a natural movement in people of all backgrounds towards an emphasis not on skin but on common courtesy and equal value. The legislators are probably several steps further back on the track yet again.

By rights "homophobia" is a word that should indicate "fear of". To justify its ongoing usage, people seek to find over eleborate links between fear and dislike. Meanwhile the word "heterophobia" doesn't exist. The "Disability Unit" in my work became the "Mobility Unit" overnight. "Travellers" and "Romanies" are now preferred to the word "gypsies".

While language and its nuances matters - sharper definitions are always helpful - it is important that fickle trends and gamesmanship do not trivialise the substantive issues. It is there that greater analysis should be applied.

Would you refuse to rent out a room to a black person because he is a black person? If so, you are a racist. Would you happen to spend all of your free time with other white people because your hobby is fox hunting and most fox hunters are white? If so, you are not a racist. Most people have that instinctive common sense surely. It isn't rocket science.

[french frank]

OTT? Fabricated? I don't think so, scotty ...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/15770241.stm

Yes, I think OTT. The one thing that I agreed with was that he said Blatter's views were 'outdated'. Indeed, and he's an elderly man. I think he's probably completely out of touch with the most vicious manifestations of racism in football (leave alone elsewhere).

Racism seems to be something that has a very dark heart and a paler penumbra, fading as it reaches the outer edge. Get anywhere near that penumbra and you're likely to be pilloried. Verb. sap. sat. Intimidation is everywhere.

[hackneyvi]

Something more than an aside but something which I neglected to add initially.

I was reading a book by Alan Watts, Psychotherapy East and West, and he makes a wonderfully radical and sedative remark about culture. He defines culture simply as an agreed way of doing things.

I have a suspicion that race can be a signifier of culture and what's actually being responded to when a racial response is made is culture. Race - standing as a signifier of culture - suggests intrinsic agreement/disagreement.

[amateur51]

By rights "homophobia" is a word that should indicate "fear of". To justify its ongoing usage, people seek to find over eleborate links between fear and dislike. Meanwhile the word "heterophobia" doesn't exist. The "Disability Unit" in my work became the "Mobility Unit" overnight.

"Mobility Unit" unfortunately suggests that disability is all about a mobility impairment which is clearly nonsense.

Racism is a value system that believes that people who are from another racial group are intrinsically flawed or less worthy or inferior. An important addition is that racists have the power to do 'something' about it - withhold jobs, housing, education, promotion, etc on those racist grounds. Thus although theoretically a Black man may wish me ill because my white skin brands me as a racist, he has (generally) no power to enforce that attitude to my detriment.

Homophobia is not as useful aword as it might be, and I prefer heterosexist. A heterosexist is someone who believes that another group of people (people who are not heterosexual) are instrinsically flawed or less worthy or inferior and who has the power to implement that value system. Thus many heterosexuals are not heterosexist, for they may have the power but they choose not to use it because they don't believe in the value system.

[amateur51]

Yes, I think OTT. The one thing that I agreed with was that he said Blatter's views were 'outdated'. Indeed, and he's an elderly man. I think he's probably completely out of touch with the most vicious manifestations of racism in football (leave alone elsewhere).

Racism seems to be something that has a very dark heart and a paler penumbra, fading as it reaches the outer edge. Get anywhere near that penumbra and you're likely to be pilloried. Verb. sap. sat. Intimidation is everywhere.

In what was OTT, scotty & french frank? Roberts (and others including Beckham) have clearly reached a breaking point in their attempts to get racist behaviour in football eradicated. at all levels. Here's the Top Man in FIFA 'belittling' the existence of and impact of racism - no wonder Jason Roberts and others went ballistic.

They must be so fed up.

I know I am.

[amateur51]

Yes, I think OTT. The one thing that I agreed with was that he said Blatter's views were 'outdated'. Indeed, and he's an elderly man. I think he's probably completely out of touch with the most vicious manifestations of racism in football (leave alone elsewhere).
.... Intimidation is everywhere.

Are you saying that racism can be excused on the grounds of old age, french frank? Or are you saying it can be explained on the grounds of old age? If someone is at the top of the world's governing body for anything, should that person not be in touch with all aspects of that something?

The old line 'You have Power? How did you get it? Who gave it to you? And how do we get rid of you?'

[Lateralthinking1]

I agree with scottycelt that England's stance is largely about not being awarded the World Cup. This has always been a country of bad losers. It is the equivalent of Beckham's kick at a player's shins when he was brought down and claimed he couldn't move. However, I don't think we can simply shrug our shoulders at racism as in "it is a normal trait". That would take us back to the days when advertisers of rooms wrote notices saying "no dogs, no blacks, no Irish". Where it matters, it really matters.

Friends of mine were appalled when at a football match in their beloved Spain. They endured only so many minutes of the supporters repeating the word "monkey" to some of the players before leaving. You have to consider Blatter's comments in that context. Football and its banter are always going to tread awkwardly in this area. It is still regarded as the height of humour to sing "You're just a bunch of tractor drivers" to any team from a predominantly rural region.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Alpy, while you have thirty winks, beware that using all those "smileys you run the risk of being mistaken for Mr ..............

I hope my views will not become confused.

[hackneyvi]

I was only allowed by the software to insert 30 yawns.

I'm surprised by the fatigue this engenders in you, EA. It's a subject which I find bracing.

[Boilk]

To the extent that we all make negative judgments at times about others based on their ethnicity, age, smell, height, level of income, we are nearly all somewhat racist, ageist, prejudiced - but I would argue that there is often an element of rational prejudice at work here which harks back to how our brains were hardwired to make snap (if often irrational) fight-or-flight judgments about those different to ourselves - a mandatory survival tool during the thousands of years we spent living as nomadic hunters or in tribes, when there was critical survival value in being wary of anyone/anything different. We simply cannot adapt in the space of a few thousand years (the blink of an eyelid in evolutionary terms) to switch off these instincts and replace them with objective logic - that will surely take our hardwired Neanderthal brains a few more millennia to accomplish.

But a lot of ‘prejudice’ is also rational - particularly ageism with regard to partners. Women practice rational ageism when dismissing older men as a partner because they are less likely to be there in the future to provide for their children. But there are survival-driven instincts which override age for certain women. She may also be practicing "rational" ageism in choosing a wealthy man 20 years her senior than a poor man her own age; despite the age trade-off here, the older, materially-established man satisfies her chief criterion of future provision for her children. And is it not rational - on a purely instinctual level - for a middle-aged man to mate with younger women? Unfaithfulness and emotional hurt doesn’t really come into the Neanderthal survival-of-the-genes equation!

All prejudices, no matter how seemingly ugly, surely have at their route a perceived survival value on a subconscious level? Some are probably unmentionable in today's politically correct climate. For example, when I walk down the streets (of ethnically diverse cities) I see an overwhelming percentage of couples display a preference for choosing a partner with the same skin colour and, by the looks of it, same cultural values – which of course will result in offspring in their own image. Is this a kind of "rational racism" staring us in the face … a hypersensitive truism upon which our mainstream media dare not tread? In the laboratory of Western multicultural society, inter-racial marriages/relationships may be increasing, but remain in a statistically significant minority vis-à-vis the degree of ethnic mix in our schools, our workplaces and our leisure time haunts. This is one of the biggest inconvenient truths of our apparently ‘enlightened’ age.

[amateur51]

In the laboratory of Western multicultural society, inter-racial marriages/relationships may be increasing, but remain in a statistically significant minority vis-à-vis the degree of ethnic mix in our schools, our workplaces and our leisure time haunts. This is one of the biggest inconvenient truths of our apparently ‘enlightened’ age.

Do you have any contemporary data to illuminate this argument please, Boilk?

And what does you argument about 'rational prejudice' have to say to those of us who choose partners as life companions rather than as good breeding stock? Ain't I human too?

[Mandryka]

Children (and quite a few adults) urgently need educating in what the term 'racism' actually means: a white person from England is not being racist when he/she insults a fellow white European.

But to answer your question....I don't believe anyone can be considered inferior on grounds of what race they belong to and I don't see how any sane person could hold a view to the contrary.

That said, people who believe that racial harmony is impossible and that immigration is politically and socially dangerous should not automatically be labelled as racists, even if we happen to disagree with them.

For my own part, I have very little interest in black culture, black music, black literature or black film. This is not to say that I think they are valueless; they just do very little for me.

I own albums by Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder and listen to them infrequently;when I do listen to them, I enjoy them, but have an underlying feeling that this music was not made for people like me.

I also own opera recordings which feature singers such as Leontyne Price, Grace Bumbry, Simon Estes, George Shirley and Willard White; when I listen to them, I never think about the race of these singers.

I have no black and only one Asian friend, but this may have something to do with living in a predominantly white area.

Does all of the above make me a racist? By the standards of the modish modern left, it probably does. And y'know what? That's fine by me.

[Boilk]

Do you have any contemporary data to illuminate this argument please, Boilk?

The next time you go out in London, Paris, Berlin, count the number of same-ethnicity couples (of any race) vs. mixed-ethnicity. The data isn’t going to be in peer-reviewed journals or on a Panorama programme!

And what does you argument about 'rational prejudice' have to say to those of us who choose partners as life companions rather than as good breeding stock? Ain't I human too?

‘Life companion’ is a conscious decision, but is related to companionship (lack of loneliness), which has its roots in reproduction.

[amateur51]

Children (and quite a few adults) urgently need educating in what the term 'racism' actually means: a white person from England is not being racist when he/she insults a fellow white European.

But isn't that what happened in the exterminations camps of Europe in WWII? The majority population in Germany (and Poland and parts of France etc) regarded Jews as being a problematic sub-human people who were entirely dispensible. White Europeans persecuting white Europeans.

[Anna]

Wary as I should be about treading on the territory of others, isn't 'queer' a term that more militant homosexuals like to apply to themselves? Didn't Adam Mars Jones once describe himself as a 'queer writer', correcting someone who'd introduced him as a 'gay writer'.

I know homosexual men who prefer themselves to be referred to a queer and do not find it an insult, I don't think they are necessarily militant, they just like the expression, as do women who prefer lesbian rather than the all-encompassing gay. I think because they like to think of Sappho and Lesbos and keep their sexuality out of the predominently Gay expression which, after all, lumps women after men in the order of sexuality grouping