FIRTS!

Also, what’s Napoleon hiding there in his jacket? A gun?

His dijonnaise.

[Tintin adds: I just stole that for the caption.]

What in the hell is an “Associate Clinical Professor Of Law” anyway?

Must…trust…shorter!

trying to picture doeskin breeches and white silk stockings as contemporary garb… shit, I just blew snot on the monitor.

Shorter shorter: Other people are racist, which means it’s OK.

Though, to be fair to Tiger Woods, how else do you expect to live in a future where everyone looks like him if he doesn’t play the field?

Actually, this seems like a positive step. He seems startled to have discovered, via a newspaper article, granted, that some black people have the same sorts of irrational fears and prejudices as some white people. Why, they’re almost just like human beings!

My Japanese-American partner and I had this discussion after the news of the idiot judge who refuses to marry black and white couples. My brother is married to a black woman, they have two kids even I can tolerate the presence of (I don’t do children.). They seem to get a bit of flak for the whole thing from various outlying relatives on both sides, but it doesn’t seem to bother them, or their kids, at all. But a certain amount of the resistance to interracial relationships is of a “Won’t somebody please think of the CHILDREN” nature, and I’m sure these people don’t see themselves as bigots, but merely as concerned about what bigots would say. (Concern trolling in everyday life, you gotta love it.) And while interracial children may suffer a few more slings and arrows than other children, so do kids with stupid names or kids with disabilities or kids with freckles, for Chrissakes, and even if every interracial marriage so far had led to divorce and miserable kids, that still wouldn’t be a good enough reason to ban them. You can’t prevent the first happy interracial marriage (which, btw, I’m positive there are many, but accepting the bigots’ argument for the moment) because you don’t think it will happen. Prejudice opposing your successful marriage is a different thing from gravity opposing your ability to flap your arms and fly. The one is possible and the other is not, and just because you refuse to admit that successful interracial marriages are possible doesn’t mean they aren’t. So concern troll all you want, but people who oppose interracial marriages for concern troll reasons are still bigots, regardless of their color, and we don’t have to listen to you as you create the exact circumstances you’re pretending to worry will cause their failure.

If you want it to change, change the way *you* talk about it, to start with. If you don’t do that, then we’re justified in assuming you don’t want public disapproval against interracial marriages to change, and are just going at it from a different angle that makes you feel less like an asshole.

Jacobsen is just pissed that no one will let him marry his gerbil.

Also, some black people use the n-word, so why can’t I?

They have Black Entertainment Television, so why can’t we do black entertainment in the form of Jim Crow.

Somehow, just somehow, I don’t think that Tiger Woods is the first professional golfer to take advantage of his extended absences from home, to bang strange.

I don’t think that Tiger Woods is the first professional golfer to take advantage of his extended absences from home, to bang strange.

There was a movie made in the 70s about the tragedy of golf marriages called “Bang the Strange Slowly.” It brought a tear to my eye.

Didn’t Robert Downey Jr make a movie a couple of years ago “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang Strange Strange” ?

The color of one’s companion has long been a major measure of “blackness” — which is a big reason why the biracial Barack Obama was able to fend off early questions about his black authenticity.

I’m glad we have Cornell law professor William Jacobson around, with his finger on the cultural pulse of the black community, to hep us white folks to what those cats are groovin on.

Didn’t Robert Downey Jr make a movie a couple of years ago “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang Strange Strange” ?

You may be thinking of “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Strange Strange”.

The color of one’s companion has long been a major measure of “blackness”

It doesn’t matter what color the gerbil is Billy. The answer is NO!

What in the hell is an “Associate Clinical Professor Of Law” anyway?

It’s someone who supervises law students volunteering for “clinics”, which are opportunities for law students to participate in representing clients, mostly those who cannot afford to pay for representation. Generally, clinical faculty in law schools are neither tenured nor tenure-track, and frequently are only part-time.

We tend to view resistence to interracial marriage as a white racist phenomenon.

“We” my ass, these mofos are ALWAYS bitching about so-called “black racism,” so the pearl-clutching claim that incomprehensive joy at inter-racial marriage from blacks proves their hitherto unsuspected bigotry is pretty damn rich.

So has Jacobson written a column about how unfair it is that black people can call each other n*****s and he can’t? Seems right up his alley.

“the pearl-clutching claim that incomprehensive joy at inter-racial marriage from blacks proves their hitherto unsuspected bigotry is pretty damn rich.”

Bigotry, nothing. It proves that blacks want to be segregated, and that ‘separate but equal’ was a doctrine that benefited both races. Or so Jacobson and his fellow travelers want to interpret it.

where In Jacobsen’s calculus do these datapoints lie:
Roger Clemens cheating on his white wife with white women,
Mike Jordan cheating on his black wife with white and black women,
A-rod cheating on hispanic wife with technicolor Madonna,
Newt Gingrich cheating on his wives with human women.

Jonah would never complain about black people using the n-word so why can’t he with so many vegetables in it.

The real question is that with all these problems, why do people keep choosing to be black?

where In Jacobsen’s calculus do these datapoints lie:

What about Captain Kirk and the green chick?

The collapse of yet another heterosexual relationship proves something profound.

where In Jacobsen’s calculus do these datapoints lie:

Are these alternative lyrics to “God rest thee merry gentlemen”? Please advise.

What about Captain Kirk and the green chick?

That’s OK because you can tell it was really a white girl painted green. Everything on TV and in the movies is pretend except for Fox News and Paul Blart.

What about Captain Kirk and the green chick?

That was Captain Pike, ACK-shually.

I call shenanigans on N__B’s geek cred.

I think Kirk and Pike both had green chicks.

That’s OK because you can tell it was really a white girl painted green.

I couldn’t and I am suspicious of anyone who thinks so.

That was Captain Pike, ACK-shually.

Recent movie, not 40-year-old TV show. Both are crap, one is fresher. Still steaming, one might say.

linky-poo for zombies

And on that note, Yvonne Craig – Batgirl and Star Trek crazy green chick – was the hottest thing on 1960s TV.

Discuss, compare, contrast.

The color of one’s companion has long been a major measure of “blackness”

This just in, Roger Ebert is officially “blacker” than Ice-T.

was the hottest thing on 1960s TV.

Diana Rigg was pretty hot.

And on that note, Yvonne Craig – Batgirl and Star Trek crazy green chick – was the hottest thing on 1960s TV.

I’ll see your Yvonne Craig and raise you Julie Newmar.

What about Captain Kirk and the green chick?

Yeah, NO SHIT!! An Orion in Starfleet?

WTF???

She should have been an Andorian.

Yvonne Craig was a sex doctor(!) in “Mars Needs Women” who had a “romance” with conquering Martian Tommy Kirk. Whither approbations, libs?

where In Jacobsen’s calculus do these datapoints lie:

Are these alternative lyrics to “God rest thee merry gentlemen”? Please advise. -smut clyde

Where In Jacobsen’s calculus do these datapoints lie,
Also and the greenie dates of captains kirk and pike,
Yvonne Craig was green and not-green in sixties bad sci-fi,
Ohh, snarkings of schaden and freud, Schaden and freud, Ohh,snarkings of schaden and freud.

some maintain the Trek reboot is not canon.

Some say.

Besides, happened after I died. Doesn’t count.

Yvonne Craig was a sex doctor(!) in “Mars Needs Women” who had a “romance” with conquering Martian Tommy Kirk.

You would think she would have better taste.

Or at least taste better.

Canon.

central to my point, tig.

O hell I give up. Didja see Thers nuked the You Tube war with the Star Wars Holiday Special? There are no winners in these things.

oops, sorry. Looks like Donny and Marie, not the Star Wars special.

Man I suck today.

Then again, Donny and Marie as Luke and Leia was pretty prophetic.

Using the Doomsday Device (donny & marie) in a YouTube war is insane.

specifically prohibited by the Geneva Internon Conventions, also.

“An Orion in Starfleet? WTF???”

The Orion Syndicate is a pirate org but they traded the slave girls. So she could be a freed slave but I wouldn’t trust her. Kinda funny how teh Sadlies go from dissing real racism to race as it is in popular culture. It’s almost like you can tell the difference between reality and fantasy. What’s up with that?

some of us are zombies, noen.

On the show Enterprise they actually turned it around and made the Orion men the slaves.

Using the Doomsday Device (donny & marie) in a YouTube war is insane.

My high speed connection is gone. Dial-up is all that’s left. And it’s degrading quickly. Aaaiiiieeee!

O Zombie, my Zombie, I was just sticking up for N__B’s geek cred: he is too also TOTALLY a geek.

My high speed connection is gone.

nice of your computer to try to spare you the horror.

tig, N__B apparently out-geeks me.

True story: One of my dearest friends is a Jewish guy. His whole childhood and teen years, his grandmother would rant at him: “Oy, whatever you do, don’t marry a Catholic girl, no shiksa Catholic girls, whatever you do.”

He complied. He got together with a Catholic boy.;)

So here’s my question:

Has anybody with any real credibility ever said that blacks can’t be racist?

I occasionally hear conservatives gloating when somebody like the Rev. Jesse Jackson or the Rev. Al Sharpton or some black NFL player says something stupid about Jews or Latinos. Their smug triumphalism seems to be based on an imaginary conservative meme (i.e., a conservative meme) that liberals believe that only whites can be racist.

Yet, and yet, with all my time hanging around people who would undoubtedly be called liberals by most movement conservatives, I have never heard this stated or implied in any manner.

I’ve little doubt that some homeless drunk on a street corner or some radical lecturer in a Pan-African Studies department has said something like this. But do conservatives have any real basis for their faith in the talking point that this is a major tenet of liberal belief? Something I may have missed?

Note to typical conservative trolls: Kanau Kambon does not count as a mover and shaker of liberal belief.

Yes, this is all important and relevant to the entirety of black America because Tiger is 100% black and not from any sort of interracial union himself.

What’s that?

Oh.

well, he didn’t marry that boy, so all’s square.

And besides which, we’re ignoring the real Star Trek racial thing. Kirk made out with Uhura, which by 60s standards means he was married to her. Which means he’s 50% more black than Tiger Woods.

The color of one’s companion has long been a major measure of “blackness”

Yeah, totally. I mean Seal? If I didn’t constantly remind myself that he’s not white, I’d totally think he was a Norwegian dude or something.

The White Companion Mask was frequently used to fool enraged yahoos in the South. They’d see an African-American walking down the street arm in arm with a Caucasian and be too confused to beat him up.

We tend to view resistence to interracial marriage as a white racist phenomenon.

Protip: Spell check is your friend.

If it weren’t for Sandford, Ensign, et al., this column would have come out a lot sooner.

I think Kirk and Pike both had green chicks.

If the special effects had been better at the time, Kirk would have been banging bug chicks and female hyperintelligent shades of the color blue.

I’ll see your Yvonne Craig and raise you Julie Newmar.

I’m with Scott on this one- I’m not knocking Yvonne Craig, but Julie Newmar put the OO in va-voom.

Where’s wOOt when you need him?

Now I freely admit that the color on Star Trek was totally fucked up. I try to adjust it on my TV—but not knowing whether the command-line shirts are supposed to be snot-green like a Marine uniform or baby-shit yellow like a Century 21 jacket, it’s difficult.

That said, on my TV, Yvonne Craig in the insane asylum episode was blue, not green. It was Susan Oliver in the original Jeffrey Hunter pilot that was green. YMMV, of course. I remember this because Yvonne Craig’s dance routine in that episode is burned permanently onto my retinas.

female hyperintelligent shades of the color blue.

Here they come now!

I have never heard this stated or implied in any manner.

I knew a guy once, of Irish descent, who asserted that an oppressed race could not be racist against their oppressor race simply because any hatred was justified, and learned the hard way. He, of course, was talking more about any Irish hatred for the English, but threw black opinion of whites into the same barrel. I didn’t buy it, but I sort of saw where he was coming from.

This only seemed to apply to the dynamic of oppressed/oppressor races, and racism was still possible, obviously, regarding a third party race, say, Jews. It seemed a bit overcomplicated to me. If you disparage someone as an individual because of part of their genetics linked to skin color or some such, it strikes me as racism regardless. It might be more understandable in one direction than another, but that hardly changes its nature.

Also, the guy was a bartender, not some guiding beacon of liberal doctrine.

but Julie Newmar put the OO in va-voom.

Indeed.

Indeed.

Wow, they really caught her good side.

Of course, it’s not her only good side.

Indeed.

WABOOLI!

My father has a similar idea regarding the English, justme, from the same context as well.

We have of course broadened it to just hating white people in general. Fucking white folk, think they’re so smart.

Generally, clinical faculty in law schools are neither tenured nor tenure-track, and frequently are only part-time.

OK, he’s the equivalent of a lab instructor in a REAL science.

IOW, he ain’t shit.

Thought so.

OK, OT (perhaps). It’s a list of cognitive biases. Interesting how many seem to apply to wingnuts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases

Didja see Thers nuked the You Tube war with the Star Wars Holiday Special? There are no winners in these things.

“Victory is no longer a truth. It is only a word to describe who is left alive in the ruins.” — Lyndon B. Johnson

That said, on my TV, Yvonne Craig in the insane asylum episode was blue, not green. It was Susan Oliver in the original Jeffrey Hunter pilot that was green.

You’re both right – Craig was variously blue AND green.

In point of fact, the color of Orion slave girls varied a lot over TOS, and varied even from shot to shot in the Craig episode. The notes on the formula for the original green makeup they used on Susan Oliver were lost, so the new make up artists tried to re-create it, but couldn’t get it right to the satisfaction of the cinematographers, who fucked around with the lighting and film exposures constantly trying to compensate.

Story is here:

http://www.themakeupgallery.org.uk/fantasy/alien/st/orion/marta.htm

Of course, the colors of human skin, even of the same “races”, varies a lot, so why wouldn’t Orions be the same?

I am told that the official skin color for Orion slave girls is now Reel Creations Avocado Temporary Body Ink.

(That’s what I get for having a geeky make-up artist for a wife.)

http://www.reelcreations.com/products/item_details.asp?idprod=65

Craig was variously blue AND green.

That skin livor strikes me as an attempt to appeal to zombie ST fans.

further Orion Green skin background;

when filming the Menagerie, Roddenberry struggled with the makeup too. But every day, when they saw the dailies (rushes? dunno my tv tech talk) Susan Oliver came out pink. They kept trying again, she kept coming up pink. Several go-rounds, I believe.

Turns out the film processors thought they were screwing something up, because nobody told them the woman was SUPPOSED to be green. So they kept adjusting the film to bring her back to pink.

Hopefully, that will give me a little geek cred back.

D.Sidhe,
you nailed it!
These selfish bi-racial copulators think of one thing only : “me! me! me! how can I satisfy my voracious lust for humans of different complexion!”
Think of the Childrens, for chrissake! Won’t somebody think of the childrens! How would these mutts amount to anything in life if they are constantly picked on at the playground and the schoolyard?

you also rightfully point out other problematics: obviously freckled people should not be allowed to marry, too, for example. However, you missed the most worrisome trait: we all know that the kids who suffer the cruelest abuse of them all are these poor “high IQ” kids. Countless are the tragic stories of brutal playground defamation of such childrens. “Brainiac” “Nerd” “Geek” “Genius” “SmartAss”… labels that are daggers in the hearts of young impressionable childrens, the wounds of which may never heal.

Therefore, anyone who cares about the childrens, would join my petition to Congress, calling for the compulsory sterilization of everyone with an IQ over 85. Join our movement! Let’s “nip” this problem at the “bud” (you know what I mean, right)

So they kept adjusting the film to bring her back to pink.
We go through something similar every morning here at Maison D’Etre.

I have never heard this stated or implied in any manner.

Tim Wise (not sure if you think he’s serious/mainstream, or extremist) used to (probably still does, but I don’t read ZMag anymore) explain it in the following way. Every ethnicity is capable of (and frequently guilty of) unjustifiable hatred and bigotry against other ethnic groups. That can, and should, be decried.

But, it isn’t racism. According to this idea, racism is only something that white people do to non-white people, because the entire concept of “race”, and specifically “whiteness”, was invented by Europeans during the imperial period for the express purpose of putting, and keeping, the wogs in their place. (I think there’s something to it, if you look at the hoops the KKK goes through to determine which ethnicities are “white” and which are “mud people”.)

So, by this reasoning, “Black people can’t be racist” doesn’t mean “Black people never hate anybody because of the colour of their skin”. It’s more like “Black people can’t be racist, by definition”. It’s based on an understanding of the word “racism” that isn’t shared by everybody.

Just back from seeing “The Road” – note to self, commit suicide when the world ends – and want to return to topic A by saying that I have no disrespect for Ms. Newmar and I was and am a huge Diana Rigg fan, but those who favor them over Y. C. are obviously blind from masturbating to the wrong fantasy.

I have no disrespect for Ms. Newmar and I was and am a huge Diana Rigg fan, but those who favor them over Y. C. are obviously blind from masturbating to the wrong fantasy.

Why can’t I have all three? Why ruin a good fantasy by having to pick a favorite?

I bow to to the wisdom of the Major.

Here’s the thing about bigotry.

If a Caucasian rants on about evil nasty African-Americans/Jews/gays/[fill in the blank], he might well land a multimillion dollar job contract.

If I were to rant on about the evil nasty Caucasians/str8s/Christians, I might well get shot.

It’s based on an understanding of the word “racism” that isn’t shared by everybody.

An interesting tack. However, it is an understanding of the word that isn’t shared by the dictionary, either, so I can only give it so much credence. The term “racism” is colorblind. Sure, one could say The Man is keeping the language down, and Whitey writes the book, but I’m going to have to say, no.

The distinction you describe is valid, but it doesn’t apply to the word.

Amongst the pros, racism means basically the structural racism that in our society privileges white people. By this measure white people who are not actively anti-racist… are racist.

The right on the other hand has this idea that “racist” means “actively overtly and if possible offensively discriminatory and/or actually murderous.” Sorry, the subtle forms are also racism, and probably most of us are guilty at one time or another: for ex, making assumptions about people’s experiences, etc etc.

As to the joy over black prejudice against white people, I think it’s simply a “haha you do it too so it’s really all right!” kinda thing. It’s this kind of crap that makes it obvious that these idiots really don’t mean well, as opposed to simply being in error in some way. It’s fucking horrifying how not well they mean sometimes. It’s like they’re the racism pom pom club. “Go Team!!”

The distinction you describe is valid, but it doesn’t apply to the word.

Mainly because the idea of “race” that underpinned modern racism has been discredited. Except for white supremacists, most people nowadays understand that the biological differences between ethnic groups are negligible. In other words, almost no one living today is a racist by Wise’s definition. Sure, “white” people may still consider themselves superior to “black” people, but if asked why, they would give cultural, economic, or historical reasons, not physical or genetic ones.

Of course, the definition of “racism” has since been broadened to include all ethnic prejudice, regardless of its basis. So while Wise’s analysis may be entirely correct (and certainly useful for a historical understanding of racism over the past few centuries), his terminology is out of touch with the common usage, which is after all what the dictionary is there to record.

The distinction you describe is valid, but it doesn’t apply to the word.

I’ve heard it described (by snooty liberal political science professors, so hey…) like this:

Racism is institutional, not personal. It means ordering a society according to greater and lesser “races” (however the society defines “race”), with more or less power and prestige in that society. Those who believe that this is the good and proper way to order a society are called “racists”. Racists can be brutal and sociopathic like Nazis, or more benign, as in Rudyard Kipling’s “White Man’s Burden”. But whether you want to kill the infidels or help them, it means you think your “race” is dominant because it is inherently superior to others, and that’s the way things should be.

Prejudice, on the other hand, is personal. Anyone can be prejudiced. Anyone can declare “I hate _________s” and it doesn’t matter what race they are or what the targets of their hatred are.

Racism, being institutional, can’t be put into practice by just anybody. You have to be a member of the racial class that is deemed “superior” in order to practice racism in a given society. Only the dominant culture can have functional racists, who are able to put their prejudice into practice with the weight of society behind it.

So a Black Muslim can be as disgustingly prejudiced as the worst member of the KKK, but he or she can’t be an actual “racist” because he or she can’t benefit from the society’s “racism”, as defined.

Amongst the pros, racism means basically the structural racism that in our society privileges white people.

Who, pray tell, are the “pros”? I’m curious.
Yes, our society has a racial bias. I can’t find a legit dictionary that defines the term in a unipolar way, however.

I think it’s simply a “haha you do it too so it’s really all right!” kinda thing.

Of course it is. They’ll use any false equivocation they can to justify how horrible they themselves are inside. “If everybody does it, it must be okay” was discredited in grade school for most of us. These shitwhistles try to use it to placate their guilt. The wild-armed flailings trying to grasp anybody else’s shortcomings to soothe their self-loathing just show how awful they are. They would like nothing more than if “everybody” really did do it, so they could feel at home.

In other words, almost no one living today is a racist by Wise’s definition.

I fear you give a surprisingly large segment of the American public way too much credit. Otherwise, yeah, I’m with ya.

Also, POOP. Because it hasn’t been said recently enough.

By “pros” I mean sociologists and those who write specifically about race–such as the aforementioned Tim Wise–and also the vastly variable people who run diversity workshops & etc ranging from piss-poor to life-changing.

Oh yeah, and institutional racism was the phrase I was flailing for earlier. Thanks for being clearer, Joe Max.

Oh yeah, and institutional racism was the phrase I was flailing for earlier. Thanks for being clearer, Joe Max.

Thx, but by the definition here, the term “institutional racism” is redundant, like saying “GOP Republican”. Racism is institutional. There is no other kind. As you pointed out, the word has been de-nominalized to mean “actively overtly and if possible offensively discriminatory and/or actually murderous.” That’s not racism, that’s offensive, murderous bigotry, fueled by active, overt prejudice.

Yabbut… those bigoted prejudiced individuals’ overt prejudice and offensive murderous bigotry are channeled into keeping the racist status quo intact–and thus is racism in the strict sense. They’re the shock troops. There’s uglier words for the function they perform; like, oh, say, terrorist.

There is no other kind.

Again, I disagree. If that were the case, it would be reflected in the definitions of the word itself. Instead, from teh wiki,

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, racism is a belief or ideology that all members of each racial group possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially to distinguish it as being either superior or inferior to another racial group or racial groups. [2]

The Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary defines racism as a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority or inferiority of a particular racial group, and that it is also the prejudice based on such a belief. The Macquarie Dictionary defines racism as: “the belief that human races have distinctive characteristics which determine their respective cultures, usually involving the idea that one’s own race is superior and has the right to rule or dominate others.”

It is the underlying belief, individual, that allows for institutional racism’s existence. There is a reason for the term institutional racism. It is distinct from the more general term, and widely used and understood of itself.

Also from teh wiki,

Sociological

Some sociologists have defined racism as a system of group privilege. In Portraits of White Racism, David Wellman has defined racism as “culturally sanctioned beliefs, which, regardless of intentions involved, defend the advantages whites have because of the subordinated position of racial minorities”.[6] Sociologists Noël A. Cazenave and Darlene Alvarez Maddern define racism as “…a highly organized system of ‘race’-based group privilege that operates at every level of society and is held together by a sophisticated ideology of color/’race’ supremacy.

Which more closely resembles your view. The word “some” at the beginning leads me to believe that it is not universal. To say “there is no other kind” would hardly be uncontroversial, even among sociologists, for whom the narrower definition would fall more within the discipline. It is hardly surprising to hear sociologists define the word in terms of social structure. I suspect that psychiatrists would have a somewhat different view, and biologists yet another. Linguists seem to have arrived at a rather more general consensus. It is there that I am going to take the accepted definition. It tends to fluctuate less.

It seems to me that your prejudiced “Black Muslim” is incapable of racism while here in America. Should he move to Zimbabwe, however, he would magically become able to participate. I am not of the belief that racism is geographically redefinable. A Nazi war criminal does not cease to be racist once imprisoned in Israel. Sorry.

those bigoted prejudiced individuals’ overt prejudice and offensive murderous bigotry are channeled into keeping the racist status quo intact–and thus is racism in the strict sense.

Indeed. By the dictionary definition, the racism is the underlying cause for the bigotry and prejudice, which are symptoms of the essential belief. To say that racism is the structure is putting the cart before the horse.

Yes, this is all important and relevant to the entirety of black America because Tiger is 100% black and not from any sort of interracial union himself.

What’s that?

justme: It is possible to work toward keeping the racist status quo – because it benefits you & yours – and not be a bigot. It seems natural that if a person didn’t believe in the basis for the system that they wouldn’t fight for it, but I think the history of empire might speak against that. Is a person who does fight for the racist status quo racist, or only if bigoted?

justme-

A quick thing at you, but pretty much every humanities professor hates Websterism, which is a popular culture way of understanding an issue by turning to the dictionary as if it was a bible. Rather a dictionary is a synthesis of a synthesis based on how the word is commonly used in culture and thus has little to do with the fields of study on how race and racism work in our culture and the definition of terms used to define and explain it.

It’s like if someone used the dictionary definition of evolution to try and debunk or ignore the latest papers in the field of evolutionary biology, because that’s what it says in the dictionary.

To the ongoing debate, a lot of the consensus is around this notion. Racial prejudice, which is bad and often feeds into racism and animosity between the races is bad and needs to be addressed wherever it forms. However, racism is a combination of racial prejudice and power.

Thus to form a racist system and furthermore to do any real damage and to engender any fear with the prejudice, one must hold a position of power over the victim of the prejudice and institutional racism stems from that and becomes as mentioned above, a partial redundancy because of how this interacts usually is far less micro and exists more macro where even blacks who may have a temporary power advantage over a white in a specific location will still be too heavily overpowered by the greater social power differential to enact any prejudice into meaningful racism. So it becomes functionally the same as institutional racism.

The main point of the explanation, indeed isn’t entirely important. The word choices end up becoming hard to enforce and explain in a culture that mixes them all together and often turns to Websterism for the final say rather than to sociologists (and is why most racism 101 conversations end up needing to start with a sort of detente, what do you think these terms mean sort of deal).

No, the main point is an explanation for why experientially racial prejudice of whites towards blacks or privileged people in general over non-privileged people is more powerful in each instance and in the consequences than racial prejudice between people in equally disadvantaged groups and that prejudice is more powerful and more consequential than prejudice in an oppressed group towards a dominant group.

This works for almost all of the isms.

Basically in example form, you are a straight man and some gay man goes off on a rant about how horrible straight people are. You laugh. Even if it is mean-spirited, it holds no meaningful weight. Most people can understand it as an oppressed group blowing off steam, those who don’t or even if he really means it, it’s one man, wholly undangerous and not really worth getting one’s knickers in a twist over.

Now, you are a latino and some black goes into a rant about you. Slightly more problematic. There could be action, sometimes it hurts a bit because you’d hope that someone else disadvantaged could understand oppression of others is not cool and it harms attempts at consensus building. And of course, as before, there could be action. A tussle, a fight, maybe a death. You have to watch your back a little.

Now you are a woman and a man is going into a rant about you. This is frightening. There is social backing behind that belief. Growing up to survive in this culture, you may be internalizing his words with greater truth, you know his accusations are often highly irrational when compared to the great inequality between you, he has greater social standing if he decides on action, not only could he do something, but the police may back him and fail to enforce the law adequately. Furthermore, he has political power over you. People like him are writing laws about how you can live your life, what value you have, what medical aid you’re allowed. People are writing laws about how much police aid you are allowed if he starts something. People like him are running the businesses that hire you, that decide how much you are to be paid, whether you should be employed. People like him run the schools who pronounce judgment on whether or not you have intelligence. There is a build-up of this over generations making the institutional sexism almost impossible to detach wholly from a thousand cases of men like him.

And that’s basically the sociological, ethnic studies, women’s studies explanations.

The right wig, yes, are just trying to erase the grades and pretend that all prejudice is culturally equal and furthermore use “they do it too” as an excuse and more importantly to make the oppressed groups guilty for institutional ism crimes. Basically they are trying to say, well the blacks need to shoulder the guilt over the KKK too, because they would totally do the same if they were dominant and besides they are dominant now and totally are doing the same, except the liberal media is hiding it because they hate whitey too. You are the real oppressed, there’s only prejudice against the dominant group these days.

Which is to say they are a combination of evil, insane, and disingenuous.

If one fights to maintain institutional racism, as such, one would be racist. No? Fighting to maintain a system that has elements of institutional racism without having those elements being the driving force is a somewhat grayer area. It is possible, I should think, that one can support, say, the U.S. government, which has some pretty undeniable racist elements, without having to be racist oneself. One’s actions can even further such elements without that being the goal. I think of the Banksters, for instance. I really don’t think they give a rat’s ass who they reduce to servitude, as long as they get rich and everybody else gets poor. That their actions might affect one race more than another is neither feature nor bug to them. That they further the institutional racism is a non issue for them. Well, most of them. I’m sure there are some who figure it in as a positive, and will hopefully roast in an even hotter level of hell for that. So, I’ll say that it is possible to further institutional racism without being either racist or bigoted. I can help a nun carry her groceries without being Catholic.

If you fight to further the institutional racism as your goal, you are most certainly racist. If you do so, and are honest with yourself, you are a bigot. There are, however, plenty of examples of people existing inside of institutionally racist societies without holding the beliefs that created the problem.

I’d be clearer, but I’m digesting.

Which also gets into the big strong reaction whites have to the discussion which is assuming all the terms, privilege (having advantages simply by being a dominant group, some of which one may not even notice unless one pays very close attention and even then), prejudice, the isms and their institutional forms, etc… are the same as effective bigotry (the active defense of the institutional isms and to otherwise attempt to enforce imbalances of power between the oppressed groups and the dominant groups) or whatever the latest terms is (this term often shifts around a bit as there are debates between those who are trying to communicate often to white privileged (or potentially prejudiced audiences) and those who want a nice accurate term for other sociologists).

Basically, this effective bigotry or active racism, is often what white people imagine with the word racism and sometimes with all the terms to describe prejudices and privileges. And further that they sometimes view this as the ONLY racism and often only recognizing examples from the past. Thus, you often get the comment, well yeah the KKK is racist, but how dare you say I have racial prejudice or white privilege or that the system by which blacks are kept in urban poverty and seen as inherently criminal is “just as bad” (aka uses the same word) or that people just reacting to social messaging are at all comparable on any wavelength to a Teabagger.

And navigating that is often the giant challenge in the street-level conversations. It’s probably because we’ve finally gotten to the point that people understand that naked isms are bad (homophobia is almost to the point of joining in the social no-no sphere), but well, therefore are trying to wipe the slate clean and say, well those bad things are gone to avoid having to do the hard work of rectifying imbalances of power, detangling widespread prejudice of all variants, and forming full acknowledgment of all existing privileges.

justme-

Yeah, that’s the big focal point right now and the debate about precise terminology. The active out and out racism cheerleaders versus those who wholly profit on and are unwilling to let go of racism-enforced imbalances of power.

There are debates about the exact words to use, passive bigotry versus active bigotry for instance, and also some who say it doesn’t matter, because while the cheerleaders may be louder, the effective result of the cheerleaders and those who merely find it lucrative to delay rectification end up being experientially similar in end result. In short, they both end up protecting, defending, and seeking to expand existing systems of racial inequality and the overall racist system.

Fierce, fierce debates…

Cerberus@8:52,

You’ll get only so much argument on the meat of that from me. What I’ve bristled at was a redefinition of the term racism that excludes the internal conversation. It is not the job of a dictionary to create meaning. It is its job to document it. Words with multiple or heavily nuanced meaning tend to have long entries. The word “racism”, not so much. You’ll note the one common word in all the definitions, “belief”. It is about how people see each other. It is personal and internal. To claim otherwise seems to me to miss the target. Institutional racism was not developed by people without that belief. It did not condense from a vacuum, fully formed. It was built. On purpose. To pretend to fight it without acknowledging its nature strikes me as folly.

The idea that racism requires power is bizarre to me. That racism itself can only flow one direction seems ridiculous. That the effects or results of racism are almost entirely unipolar is undeniable, but is not at all the whole picture.

By that definition, all racism in Nazi Germany ceased to exist the moment Berlin fell, and there cannot be any white racists in South Africa now that Apartheid is gone. I call bullshit.

justme-

Not really. Power is not dualistic. Collapse nazi germany and you still have an anti-semitic white germany that carries at least the institutional legacy of enforced anti-semitism. Collapse Apartheid and you still have a racist white power center to South Africa who has been privileged to the monetary and political rungs of power and thus can mitigate and consolidate a still hefty bit of power as well as the legacy of their actions. Collapse slavery in America, and you still have white Southerners with political, economic, and social power over blacks and a system defined by the legacy of slavery to protect imbalances of power.

Collapse the beast and the beast’s children still run amuck. Collapse every last beast and child, and their ghosts will still haunt. This is the world we live in and the one sociologists try to describe.

Also, yes, sociology and the other social sciences fully understand and furthermore document how these systems were built, expanded upon, enforced, made worse, or made explicit and also the many facets of power. There’s monetary, social, political, and simply the voices in one’s head. The automatic deference and fear of the oppressed, the automatic swagger and natural utilization of privilege (often neutral morally) of the dominant.

One can topple a very bad system, form a revolution. But total victory? A utopian society where neither the institution or its legacy remains? Unlikely to occur for a good long while.

On Websterism: A dictionary’s job is not to document meaning or even to encapsulate meaning. It’s job is to merely communicate a general idea of meaning. Most of its job is to prompt social understanding of a term, remind someone of what it generally means by linking it to better understood words.

It is not and never was intended to be a catalog of terminology that was fully comprehensive. One should not get a meaningful understanding of gravity by looking it’s definition in the dictionary and everyone knows that the entry for love is paltry compared to lived experiences of it, and to great poetry and literature on the subject.

But for some reason, the isms are supposed to have their final say be the dictionary rather than the disciplines designed to examine them, document them, and explain them. It seems odd that that would be the case. The dictionary is merely to get a general idea and more critically get a general idea of how culture uses the term. Thus most people owing to white culture jumping from the word racism to KKK Teabaggers and thus ignoring how these people are merely the loudest proponents and cheerleaders.

These people are dangerous, I don’t want to dispute that, before I mentioned expansion, people like this are at the forefront of that. When a movement goes from a quiet passive racism or enshrined prejudice to “let’s throw the arabs in Gitmo” or “let’s kill the faggots and jews”, it is these loud behemoths behind it. But the maintenance of the system often has little to do with these loudest. These people have little power unless there is a systemic problem built up and maintained for which a large population can feel safe agreeing with them on one level or another.

And when you look at a thousand of these systems and the complex ways they interact, you end up needing to define terms the way sociologists do. Now, where the word racism falls in this naming of things is of the greatest worry and consternation of whites, but I fear it’s part of the problem that that is so.

A lot of whites seem to focus on racism the word as the only word that matters. That once that’s defined, that’s the only problem and one can now ignore bigotry, prejudice, privilege, and inequality as if they aren’t connected together.

This is indeed why racism is defined the way it is. It’s the systemic thing. The combination of all the stuff into how the system functions and perpetuates itself by defining the culture for each new generation. Where the war goes on and one should be caring about all the other stuff, because the other stuff is why some hick ranting about the damn negros matters on any level and why we should be laughing when they try and find some oppressed person expressing a negative sentiment against a different oppressed group or against the dominant group as some sort of excuse.

Indeed, that was what I was trying, unsuccessfully to communicate in my racism=privilege+power thing.

The main point of that is that there is a vast difference between prejudices down than prejudices up in their impact and effect and the dictionary definition glosses over that in favor of treating all prejudice equally without recognizing the vast differential in power. A black man who hates whitey is meaningless, a sad old fool. A white man who hates blacks? That’s probably the chief of police.

Huh, weird, my response disappeared into the æther.

Basically, justme, my response was to summarize that power is more complicated than overt systems of oppression. The germans didn’t instantly love jews the day the Nazis fell and there was obvious legacy loss of power, stability, and choices for the survivors.

There is also a tendency for dominant people to cling to the words of ism to the exclusion of everything else. This is why sociologists try to define isms systematically, as the systems of oppression they are to incorporate all of the other words and systems and hierarchies of personal blame, etc…

Also, the dictionary is a bad source. It’s not meant to be wholly accurate, it’s meant to provide a hint of a word’s meaning by invoking other words one knows so that one knows how generally to use it in culture and cultural mediums. It is not meant to trump the academic field actually researching the subject. Plus, the dictionary definition has a known problem, which is that it assumes an equality of prejudices that is demonstrably false. There is greater weight from a white man hating a black man than a black man hating a white man, because of a greater system of power differential involved. This is the main problem solved in the often used sociological construct that I mentioned.

On biology, the dictionary definition for the biological definition of evolution is not wholly accurate to the definition by the field of evolutionary biology. It’s closer than the definition for racism and certainly than the romantic definitions of love, but still.

I dislike the process as an academic of treating the dictionary like the last word on these sorts of things. It’s a wonderful guide and crucial for the communication of the English language, but there’s a reason fields like linguistics were formed instead of everyone just looking over to the dictionaries. There’s a crap load of nuance and furthermore strife between popular usages of terms and academic uses of terms.

Andrew N.P. said,
Except for white supremacists, most people nowadays understand that the biological differences between ethnic groups are negligible.

Tell it to Charles Murray.

Acksually, BET is one of my fave movie channels. It has great movies like “Trading Places” and “Coming to America” on it.

This old white woman loves BET.

Shorter Professor Bill Jacobson, L-ega-l I-nsu-r-r-ec-t-io-n

I think you misspelled the website name. Shouldn’t it be “Le-gal Ins-Erection”?

Somehow, just somehow, I don’t think that Tiger Woods is the first professional golfer to take advantage of his extended absences from home, to bang strange.

Also, I wonder about how many women of colour frequent golf-oriented events? I mean, look, if I’m banging twelve women at a time, I’m looking for the low-hanging fruit and little concerned with the racial make up or quotas of my entourage.

Racism is institutional. There is no other kind.

I’m going to dissent, mildly. I can see a situation where a white person, having no reason to be exposed to stereotypes or such, might develop a suspicion of people of dark complexion if he or she had a traumatic experience with just one person of the opposite tonality.

Racism is fear. Fear can be institutional, but it can also be individual, and I think that’s the loophole many bigots drive their trucks thru.

“What? I can’t be racist! Look at all my black friends!” as they deny equal opportunities to large swaths of the population.

I am still asking myself why these yahoos want to share their ingrained cultural biases so blatantly in the first place.

Assistant clinical law professor isn’t going to stop anyone from getting married. All he can do is broadcast his own intolerance and ignorance.

I gotta say this, though it is damnably obvious:
Tiger gets more action in one day than you’ll get in your miserable life, Jacobson. Quality and qauntity. Same with Kobe. And Randy Moss, Adrian Peterson and so many other guys. You can bitch all you want, that won’t change, prof.

We now return you to teh funny.

Racism is institutional. There is no other kind.
I’d argue that it’s both institutional and individual and they’re codependent. As a white male I have certain societal privileges, both large and small. But racism is felt, and acted upon, by individuals. A racist system depends upon individual actions in order to manifest itself. Of course, this “action” may take the form of inaction; such as not intervening to stop racism, but the system cannot exist without it.

However, because the system depends on individual actions to exist, then because individuals are imperfect, the system is imperfect. Because the system is flawed then the racism built into the system can manifest itself against anyone in society, regardless of their presumed race. A group of white thugs beating up a black passerby because they are acting on their hatred of the Other are racist, but so is a group of black thugs beating up a white passerby because of their hatred of the Other. In both cases individuals acted as individuals upon another individual and in both cases they were acting on the same impulse to attack someone for being different. What the right refuses to admit, however, is that the way that power is distributed within society will affect how the racism manifests itself. As a white male I am much less likely to be hurt by racism. While that doesn’t mean I am immune, it does mean that I have a built-in privilege that drastically reduces my chances of being hurt by it.

The problem reminds me of the “guns don’t kill people” argument by the right. They’re correct, guns don’t kill, people do. But guns sure make it easier to do so. In the same way, human societies create conditions which nurture, direct and excuse fears of the Other. Society defines who is “Other” and who is therefore to be ostracized. However, it depends on individuals to act on those fears for the racism built into the system to have any effect.

In short, institutional racism shapes individual racism and allows it to exist, but without the individual actions the institutional racism cannot exist.

On a side note, I’d argue that all human societies suffer from a form of racism, because all people have a fear of those who are different. Exactly what is meant by “different” depends on society and the individual. It can be race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, hair color, handedness, favorite sports teams, etc, etc. It’s one of the marks of a civilized society if the members of that society actively struggle to overcome those fears.

And chick from Orion are HOT!

Racism is fear. Fear can be institutional, but it can also be individual, and I think that’s the loophole many bigots drive their trucks thru.

Dagnabit. Actor says in 2 sentences what I tried to say in a full page….

What about Captain Kirk and the green chick?

She was like a McDonald’s Shamrock Shake—vanilla with green coloring.

Tiger gets more action in one day than you’ll get in your miserable life, Jacobson.

Too bad he doesn’t really look like the painting, because that’s a nice ass. Still needs a head-bag, though.

Dagnabit. Actor says in 2 sentences what I tried to say in a full page….

Three, if you count the “chicks from Orion are hawt”…

There’s a crap load of nuance and furthermore strife between popular usages of terms and academic uses of terms.

And that’s the problem. It’s sort of like the word “theory.” In everyday usage, it means a hypothesis. In natural science, it means a proven model. In other fields, it means a branch of study.

Back on topic, with the word “racism,” to John Q. Public it means bigotry. But sociologists already have a word for individual bigotry, namely “bigotry.” So they use “racism” for something else, specifically the institutional bigotry that results in a sort of ethnic caste system. In this case, a person is racist if and only if they support a racist system, regardless of their own prejudices.

This makes it confusing as hell when sociologists try to talk to regular people about racism, just like when scientists try to talk to regular people about evolutionary theory. In a sense, they’re speaking different languages.

Tell it to Charles Murray.

He was great on Chappelle’s Show. Anyway, I said most, not all. And I could still be wrong. I don’t know how stupid the average American is.

He was great on Chappelle’s Show.

Cholly MURPHY, not Murray….Sheesh!

Andrew-

I’d pretty much agree with that. It is almost a separate language and bridging that gap is ironically a whole academic discipline in and of itself.

trying to wipe the slate clean and say, well those bad things are gone to avoid having to do the hard work of rectifying imbalances of power, detangling widespread prejudice of all variants, and forming full acknowledgment of all existing privileges.

I’d say this is the true basis of the resistance to accepting the fact of structural racism. It’s too haaaard to deal with. I didn’t do it! I didn’t set it up! I’d change it if I had a magic wand! But doing any actual work and taking any lumps to do it… no no no.

On our big dic tangent: Without bigoted individuals the racist system would fall apart. But without the structure, who would care if an individual was bigoted? Besides say his/her psychologist, family and etc. If there wasn’t the power imbalance what difference would it make? Surely there’s folks out there with a visceral dislike of white-blonde with white eyebrows & white eyelashes & freckles people… but without the power differential (are we talking vehicles now? english is weird) it don’t mean a thing, it ain’t got that swing ha cha cha etc.