What makes you think you're not a racist?

[John Skelton]

The refusal to see women (for example) as having interests different from those of the working class in general has enabled Trade Unions to ignore their specific concerns, especially when they conflicted with those of men.

If I'm arguing against anything it's against isolating people for the purposes of categorisation, marketing and control. I completely agree that any construction of a collective or a multitude shouldn't be based on ignoring or ignorance. Feminism should be central to any politics, IMV.

If they aren't, then they have no right to claim to be. If they are, they have that right. That's all I mean.

Sorry to recur to this: but it would be possible to say that "Jews have no right" to make those claims, whereas other groups do. I wanted to make clear that's not Sand's argument: his deconstruction of these particular claims fits a wider argument about such claims in general.

[jean]

Sorry to recur to this: but it would be possible to say that "Jews have no right" to make those claims, whereas other groups do. I wanted to make clear that's not Sand's argument: his deconstruction of these particular claims fits a wider argument about such claims in general.

Well, it wasn't what I was saying, nor what I thought anyone else was saying, either. Sorry for the confusion.

[Pilchardman]

If I'm arguing against anything it's against isolating people for the purposes of categorisation, marketing and control. I completely agree that any construction of a collective or a multitude shouldn't be based on ignoring or ignorance. Feminism should be central to any politics, IMV.

Quite right.

[amateur51]

Look forward to it.

I also have to be somewhere else for a while.

Oh dear, a morning at the hospital, nurses spreading KY jelly on my chest (for a routine ECG) - 'There are clubs up West where you pay good money for this' I quipped and thankfully they laughed.

I’ve been involved in running diversity training as we didn’t make this confusion but I can see how others might.

Your choice of left-handedness as an example is apposite because how it is treated can be seen as cultural relativism of course. After all my own culture links ‘left-handedness’ with ‘sinister’ and ‘gaucheness’ and it’s not that long ago that left-handed people were bullied and abused during attempts to turn them into right-handers ion early childhood and beyond. I experienced this as late as the mid-70s in University where my request for a left-handed surgical instrument was regarded with great froideur. Did I not realise that surgeons were meant to be ambidextrous? Well yes, but when it actually hurts to use the conventional instrument in the left hand and there is an instrument which is designed for the left hand available, is it not a tad precious to insist that I should use my weaker right hand?

When eating with my hands I always explain why I am using my left hand and it has never resulted in anyone taking offence and has often resulted in interesting conversations, even in one case a middle-aged woman getting quite upset because she felt very diminished by her culture’s attitude to her being naturally left-handed. We all have something to learn.

Re straw men comment. I apologise if I’ve offended people but I felt at that point that pilchard man was scoring points by suggesting that the general trend on this thread was to conflate ‘multiracialism’ with ‘multiculturalism‘, something which wasn;t occurring, I felt. I now understand better where pilchard man is coming from and I apologise for suggesting that he was setting up straw men.

[Pilchardman]

Re straw men comment. I apologise if I’ve offended people but I felt at that point that pilchard man was scoring points by suggesting that the general trend on this thread was to conflate ‘multiracialism’ with ‘multiculturalism‘, something which wasn;t occurring, I felt. I now understand better where pilchard man is coming from and I apologise for suggesting that he was setting up straw men.

No problem, amateur. I must take some blame for dropping a viewpoint only briefly expounded upon an audience unfamiliar with it. I'm not offended by honest debate, no matter how robust.

[Donnie Essen]

What makes me think I'm not a racist? 'Cause I check that stuff and turn to my better nature. Ever seen the tv program, 'Peep Show'? Ain't we all got an inner voice constantly going and when walking the streets is sometimes like a petty and mean and kinda vindictive, stupid version of yourself? Easy to avoid it if you live in middle of nowhere, but I don't and I'm a guy with little patience. Any strong, healthy, virile man is gonna have a touch of natural spite for the next man on the street, whatever their color, and will likely label them whatever insult comes into their head if they step into your path. But don't let any of the bad stuff out and verbalize it, because it's false and trivial, which becomes clear when you stop for a moment and realise what a dumbass is man on some deep and profound level.

[hackneyvi]

What makes me think I'm not a racist? 'Cause I check that stuff and turn to my better nature. Ever seen the tv program, 'Peep Show'? Ain't we all got an inner voice constantly going and when walking the streets is sometimes like a petty and mean and kinda vindictive, stupid version of yourself? Easy to avoid it if you live in middle of nowhere, but I don't and I'm a guy with little patience. Any strong, healthy, virile man is gonna have a touch of natural spite for the next man on the street, whatever their color, and will likely label them whatever insult comes into their head if they step into your path. But don't let any of the bad stuff out and verbalize it, because it's false and trivial, which becomes clear when you stop for a moment and realise what a dumbass is man on some deep and profound level.

You seem then to accept racism as part of the human package and a part of yourself but feel it is the outer expression of racism that would make you a racist.

What would the extent of your outward action be to feel you would be a racist? Would it be the use of a word? The giving of a look? The avoidance of a shop? The selection of a friend?

What would be the minimal extent of action required to realise your inner racist as an outer being? And what would you do if your racism were 'realised'?

[Donnie Essen]

You seem then to accept racism as part of the human package and a part of yourself but feel it is the outer expression of racism that would make you a racist.

I accept pettiness and vindictiveness as part of the human package, and see personal racism as a means, a weapon, for which the mind grasps and the better nature abhors. I try not to carry weapons.

[Nick Armstrong]

I was listening to Classic FM on the way home because I didn't want to listen to the concert on R3 (not least because I felt like boycotting it as a result of Trelawney's nauseating advert for it over the past few days). I was rewarded with a bracing and uninterrupted Schumann 4 from the Northern Sinfonia under Zehetmair .. Just what I wanted.

'Why is Caliban wittering on about that on this thread?' I hear a number of you cry.

Because the Schumann was preceded by an advert for a cruise.

To the Caribbean.

Where the cruisers were promised that they would be surrounded by:

"exuberant locals"

I am not hyper-sensitive to "-ism" issues; indeed, I'm more likely to take the michael out of 'diversity policies' and the like.

But I did find that phrase, in that context, an offensive stereotype, conjuring up images of... well, I don't need to specify.

Was I right to think that they are trading off a simplistic racial cliché? Or have I been indoctrinated?

[Serial_Apologist]

I was listening to Classic FM on the way home because I didn't want to listen to the concert on R3 (not least because I felt like boycotting it as a result of Trelawney's nauseating advert for it over the past few days). I was rewarded with a bracing and uninterrupted Schumann 4 from the Northern Sinfonia under Zehetmair .. Just what I wanted.

'Why is Caliban wittering on about that on this thread?' I hear a number of you cry.

Because the Schumann was preceded by an advert for a cruise.

To the Caribbean.

Where the cruisers were promised that they would be surrounded by:

"exuberant locals"

I am not hyper-sensitive to "-ism" issues; indeed, I'm more likely to take the michael out of 'diversity policies' and the like.

But I did find that phrase, in that context, an offensive stereotype, conjuring up images of... well, I don't need to specify.

Was I right to think that they are trading off a simplistic racial cliché? Or have I been indoctrinated?

One of the first things I remember as resented in the early '50s was Afro Caribbeans' exuberance. It didn't seem to fit in with uptight, British ways...

[scottycelt]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/15804350.stm

Must be one of the most politically-incorrect (if admirably informative) surnames around ...

[hackneyvi]

One of the first things I remember as resented in the early '50s was Afro Caribbeans' exuberance. It didn't seem to fit in with uptight, British ways ...

Do you recall how uptight Caribbeans were received by exuberant Brits, SA?

[hackneyvi]

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.

I am inclined to feel that I'm quite as much thought by my thoughts as that I think them. Also, that character interacting with environment creates personality, the form and expression of the character.

There's a proposition going around that we're all equal despite all being different; that we're all of equal value even though we're all of us clearly experienced, understood and valued differently by every person on Earth. Just what this equality can mean in any practical way isn't very different from the ordinary obligations of kindness and courtesy except that any individuating characteristics of the person are disregarded in the administration of this love.

It's hard to celebrate difference when difference is seen as vice, but why should not the same programmed capacities to yearn and search for cocks and cunts, tits and lips, for water and fruit, for jokes and solitude and time and to shrink and flinch from fists and fire, thunder and snow, depths and points; why should some not be antagonstic or deprecatory by instinct towards difference; indeed, why should that not be a common human quality in different proportions and mixtures in many or most? Some may be missing entirely this antipathy but others have it in spades. Given the variability and preponderance of other human attributes in our species, why should racism not be a fundamental quality of a character.

I'm still inclined to think that the antipathy for race itself may have nothing to do with, for example, skin or other feature except that skin or hue or nose or eye can be a signifier of culture.

It strikes me that a modern aspect of this cultural antipathy which manifests as racism may be racism itself. So that race can signify to race the unpleasantness, exilharation, inconvenience, virtue, shame of racism. Racism becomes not simply an action or opinion but an overpowering association so that racism is present to a race in all circumstances simply by allusion to, representation or the company of its own or another race.