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When Everyone Is a Racist, No One Is
Recently at work, we had a town hall discussion about racism and BLM. Of course, all opinions were welcome as along as the opinion toed the party line. Anything outside that narrow window was shouted down. But that’s a discussion for a different day (or maybe not… I’m tired of it all). During the discussion one person posited:
“People are getting defensive about being called a racist. While it is certainly true that there is systemic, institutional racism [Editors note: this of course goes without saying, and goes unquestioned], that doesn’t mean everyone is a racist. There are things we need to improve.”
This was not good enough for another co-worker:
“NO!! EVERYONE is a racist! We are all racists!”
This was met with applause and commendation.
This got me thinking: If we are all racists, then what value does it mean to call someone out as a racist? Why should someone be punished specially for making racist remarks. Look, he’s no better or worse than the rest of us – we are all racist, we are all tainted. Why should anyone be fired or called for making racist remarks? We all harbor that kind of hate inside of us.
By proclaiming that everyone is a racist, we have cheapened truly offensive remarks, and normalized truly hateful people. When everyone is a racist, then no one is….
Published in General
So, American libraries are still segregated? Or does the phrase “those policies… have not changed dramatically” mean something different? And the cataloging hasn’t changed. Books are cataloged in a racist manner? Was Dewey a member of the Klan?
The closer you look the less sense it makes. I think the cataloging thing is about libraries needing to include more books by authors of color or something.
Well I think that’s a good idea – especially those written in the 17th and 18th centuries.
This is gonna end in a book-burning isn’t it.
Were there any sane people who spoke up at this meeting?
I would say that it is true that we are all pre-programmed by nature to trust people in our own family/clan/tribe/whatever more than outsiders. There are all kinds of bad instincts that we are born with. Toddlers behave terribly without being taught right from wrong. So yes, if we all behaved strictly according to our caveman instincts the world would be pretty dreadful. But most of us have been civilized to the point where we examine our motives and make sure that we are acting out of some kind of logic and not just illogical instinct. If people believe that we are all racists and cannot overcome our baseline programming, then what is the point of all these meetings? If their belief is correct (and of course it is not), the solution would be to just accept that racist behavior will always be with us, as un-eridicatable as the need to breathe oxygen.
Heh. Not sure what’s “brave” about parroting the Party Line.
“Where They Have Burned Books, They Will End Up Burning People”
Heinrich Heine
Like Tennessee Coats ? NO thank you.
Come to think of it, the truly brave people I have known never talked about how brave they were.
On the topic of library books and black authors, I once got in trouble as a little boy when I tried to check out a book, titled “The Foxes of Harrow,” written about 1947. The librarian called my mother to check if I was allowed to read that adult book. I can’t remember if I was allowed to do so. That was an historical romance about the antebellum South. The author was an African American. Nobody knows about him anymore.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Yerby
His books, unlike Tennessee Coats, were good. I refuse to use the affected spelling of that trash writing “author’s” name.
Personally, I actually do subscribe to the notion that everyone’s a little bit racist. Like so many other human personality traits, racism is a spectrum.
Unfortunately, that notion has itself been declared racist since orthodoxy dictates that Victims of European Colonialism cannot be racist.
And it requires an exquisitely detailed definition of the minutest expressions of racism. Pico-aggressions. Functionally racism is at the most the smallest part of any common experience. I remember an account of John Lennon criticizing Paul’s choice of marrying Linda, saying that she certainly was not his ‘type’. To which John alluded to Yoko being a similar surprise. I argue that either of these two choices could be considered racist. But in the final analysis what difference does any of it really make?
Just because somebody thought that crap up doesn’t make it true. Racism is a thing. Anyone can be one. It involves your heart and your attitude toward another human being. If they want to come up with some other concept about power and whatever, let them think up a different word for it.
Besides, if white people were the ones in power right now, all the rioters and members of Antifa and BLM would be in jail. Some “power”!
I wish it was only a thing, but racism is many different things. This is why some people see it everywhere and some people see it nowhere.
The last definition is the least useful and the most harmful.
Oh, and all of these can be performed by any race.
No, we stuck very faithfully to the self-flagellation agenda.
Libraries are bastions of liberalism and the bastiards will destroy you if they find out you’re not one of them.
I. Am. Aware.
I know. I just really wanted to type, ‘bastiards’.
The good Doctor would resent that.