6 posts tagged “racism”

So, I was a lit major for quite a while, until I discovered linguistics.  I was always chronically irritated by my lit classes because, for the most part, there was no rigor there.  People would stroll into lit classes and just sort of say whatever they wanted to say and, by and large, as long as what they were saying reflected the accepted "politically correct" view, they skated by with it, no matter how stupid or unrelated to the text.  In short, it was everything I hate, except that I like to read novels.

In the course of my literature career, I had to read Kate Chopin's The Awakening several times.  It's an alright novel, though I am of the opinion that it is famous mostly because its writer was a woman.  It's certainly not a bad book, but I'd rather read Carson McCullers any day.

But what really irritated during all those tedious class discussions is that people consider this a "feminist" book and the main character--I hesitate to say "protagonist" because I find her not very sympathetic--a sort of heroine.  I don't see it.  The woman isn't oppressed; she's bored.  There's a difference.

It's been a while since I read it, but let me see if I recall the details.  She is married to a reasonably wealthy man.  She has "octoroon" nannies for her kids--weren't they octoroon, or maybe quadroon?  (What a great word!  I want to be an octoroon!)  She doesn't have to work at anything, really, since she doesn't have to make money, take care of her kids, do her own housework, cook their meals or any of it.  Her husband even goes so far as to permit her an affair.  Sooooo, she's oppressed how exactly?  Oppressed by ennui, no doubt, but there is a good reason why that is a reflexive verb in French--she is boring herself. 

I was just reading something, maybe on Salon, that again referred to this damn novel as a feminist novel.  Feck!  If that is a feminist novel, making some huge statement about bored upper-class women, then little wonder I never seem to find myself having anything in common with "feminism."  Meh.  I'm crying a river for bored ladies everywhere.

Incidentally, since we're talking about my infamous career as a literature major, there are two things worth pointing out.  The first is that in a heated discussion about WEB DuBois I was, in fact, labeled a "racist" by my (very white) professor and the majority of the class, virtually none of whom had read the text.  I would later be labeled a "racist" by all the white people in my Harlem Renaissance class but NOT the African-American professor who actually knew what I was talking about and saw my point, even if she didn't 100% agree.  Besides, WEB DuBois was totally a tool of the Japanese imperalists.  Booker T Washington FTW!

The second is that I did finally find some rigorous lit classes.  Freudian interpretation was *extremely* rigorous and I worked my ass off for that class, and then the Literature of American Imperialism seminar was also very good and rigorous although my viewpoint that I really didn't care whether every novel had serious female characters and was fully comfortable with some novels being focused on men--we were talking about Heart of Darkness at the time--was scoffed at because I guess every story needs great female characters even if it would be a detriment to the plot line or realism or whatever.  Are there enough good female characters in the canon?  No.  Does Heart of Darkness need one or more?  No.  Does it offend me to read novels that are all about men doing manly things?  No.  Better than reading novels that have nothing to say except that rich housewives are bored.

Anyway, by the time I found a couple of professors who did not accept this kind of laziness and made students actually consider what they were saying, I was already lost to linguistics.  Oddly, my linguistics professors could talk about literature more competently than some of my literature professors.  The clear difference was that in linguistics, if you hadn't read the text, you couldn't really bullshit your way through it (although some people certainly tried) and we talked about data and evidence and syntagms.  It was awesome.  And we managed to get through entire semesters without anyone being labeled a racist or a misogynist, which I found admirable. 

I think I mentioned once before here that I gave a paper at a conference that the audience entirely failed to understand.  It was the paper I wrote for Literature of American Imperialism, and it wouldn't have been so difficult if the audience--mostly lit majors with a few creative writing majors just to throw everyone's game off--were accustomed to rigorous thinking.  What I was saying was definitely not the approved perspective on the politics of The Other, but I could have been talking about why monkeys like potato chips for all they knew. 

Rigor, people!  I want more rigor!  Not stories about upper-class ladies who are bored!  I prefer the women who, like, do stuff.  Stories about bored people are usually, prima facie, not very interesting.  Stories about chicks who kick ass, now that is a different kettle of fish altogether.  But most of all, if you're going to claim something as "feminist" at least make that claim reasonably defensible.  OK?

I read, a little while ago, a post from Jack Yan about the new Vogue cover featuring LeBron James and the sort of irritating (to me) Gisele Bundchen (umlaut purposefully omitted).  I have seen the cover in the supermarkets and stuff and thought it was, whatever, LeBron looks kind of hot, Gisele looks like Gisele, but whatever.

I never once thought of King Kong or the threat white women face from big, bad, burly black men.  Not once.  At least, not until I read Jack Yan's post.  And see, that is why I am a racist I guess, because I am completely oblivious to the racist stereotypes being perpetrated at my local supermarket.  The blogosphere is apparently alive! with all kinds of people being offended by the presentation of LeBron as scary and gorilla-like.  They have taken umbrage!  I had no idea until I read Jack Yan's post, and then I dismissed it as another case of people who have an ideology that they then go around seeking evidence for--as the Great Tony Mattina used to say, let the data drive the theory, not the other way around.  If you want to find evidence of racism, you'll certainly find it, but the actual data would suggest a much more complex picture--complex and nuanced like Obama's speech (a speech, by the way, that I thought was fucking excellent.  Obama, I will vote for you.  Unless you do something really stupid, like have sex with rabbits on camera with that blind guy from New York.)

Then, because my job is totally sucking tonight (grrrrr--pulmonary function tests suck ass!), I perused some of the links Jack provides and even read what my old friends at Jezebel had to say*.  And now I have to add this:

If you look at that picture of LeBron and the G-bund and see King Kong and a scary black man--maybe even a criminal!  get out the chastity belts!--that says way more about you than it does about the rest of us who just looked at it and thought, "oh, wow, rich, famous people on the cover of a magazine.  fancy that.  maybe i'll get some altoids..."

I'm not going to say I'm colorblind--I can't, since about a year after I moved to Montana (by far the whitest place I ever lived, since I divided my childhood between Hispanic-majority New Mexico and a black-majority part of Arkansas) I caught myself thinking, as I saw a black man walking down the street, "Ooh, black dude.  Damn, I'll bet he's conscious of that all the time living here.  Or maybe not.  Maybe all the white people just pretend they don't notice, like I'm pretending not to notice.  I'm way overthinking this.  He's just a dude, walking down the street.  But why is he carrying a squeegee?  Eh, what the hell?  Why not carry a squeegee?"

But, honestly, when I looked at that Vogue cover I didn't see a "black man" let alone a "scary black man" and certainly not a gorilla-like black man.  I saw LeBron James, with a basketball and a Brazilian (model).  No umbrage necessary. 

Also, offense is regularly taken at the fact that Vogue so rarely features anything but white (assuming we count the Latins as white.  Yeah, I said "the Latins.") on its covers...so...I'm not sure exactly what the offended multitudes want. 

Days like this, and especially since the speech, I really think we need Obama at this point.  We have got to start getting past this shit, people.  In general, certain segments of the population are getting way too offended all the time (I have no idea how you even live that way--what is it like to be offended all the time?  It must particularly suck since you do not, in fact, have a right not to be offended). 

Or should we just keep fighting over the actions of our ancestors?  Mine, before coming to America, were sitting around in Ireland wondering if they should try to hold out during the Great Potato Famine (fortunately, we're stout people) or get on a boat to come to the promised land to be...wage slaves and sharecroppers.  By the time they got here, slavery was near its end in this country (though wage slavery continues unabated), and anyway they were far too freakin poor to own anyone.  And the Osage ancestors were, you know, chilling on the res after walking the Trail of Tears and all that (but they weren't slaves, right?  so that makes it all OK.  except that some of them were slaves, and anyway, like 95% of them died).  So, those are my oppressive white ancestors*.  How about yours?

Also, why don't African-American people in America seem more concerned, as a whole, about slavery that is still going on in Africa?  You'd think there would be a sympathy thing.  Feh.  (moderately related side note:  The entire reason I cannot stomach Chris Rock is that I once saw him doing stand-up and he was saying that white people are always complaining about everything, "Oh, I'm lactose intolerant" but you don't see starving Africans complaining about being lactose intolerant because they're just happy to get milk.  This left me speechless.  I'm just a cracker, but even I know that most Africans are in fact lactose intolerant, and so if they are being given milk, they aren't complaining about lactose intolerance mainly because they're too sick to do so.  As Public Enemy once said, "Read a book or something.  Learn about yourself, learn your culture."  WORD.  But, hey, with a bit of luck, the people who are in charge of sending Africans relief packages are also crackers who know about the racial and geographic lines of lactose intolerance.  Hmm, but now I'm reading through this collection of quotes and finding him kind of awesome.  Maybe I gave up on him too soon.  He should have just gone with the peanut allergy instead of lactose intolerance.) 

But that's just me.  I am white, and so that per force makes me a racist in the irrefutable logic of the offended.

*But on one of their many sister sites, Guanabee, I found this interesting tidbit:  "There’s been a long tradition of a “fight for white,” meaning that various ethnic groups over the years have had to struggle for the chance to be seen as normal and neutral. Irish-Americans, for example, who are today almost synonymous with the concept of what it means to be white (fevered dancing without the use of hips or shoulders, the consumption of potatoes), were very much “the other” for a very, very long time in America. Jewish and Italian Americans were also not always considered white folks here in the old U.S. of A. " 

**I also have Quapaw Indian ancestry.  And no, you cannot tell by just looking at me.  I pretty much look like a potato-eatin honky.

I'm purdy sure y'all are getting tired of me writing (read: bitching) about things like this, but damn!  Damn it all to hell!  I'm angrrrry.

I had thought that maybe I could read Jezebel if I stopped giving the comments too much attention.  But nooooo!

Today there was this nonsense.

First, this beauty pageant winner (Kate Michael) is accused of complaining that she's oppressed because she's white.  The quote that is based on is this, that she wrote on a friend's Facebook page:  "I got 2nd runner up, which is incredible, since they were never going to pick a girl as 'pale' as me anyway."  When the Washington Post (?  WTF?  Are Facebook posts considered hard journalism these days?  fuckin a, man) questioned the racial implications in the comment, she denied them and said it had to do with her not having a good tan.  From the wording of the comment, that could be what she meant, if we're going to give her some benefit of the doubt here instead of just looking for evil racists lurking in our pudding.

So, then Jezebel researches the matter further and finds that she has "opaquely referenced her oppressed-minority status" before.  To wit, they find this quote:

"[Kate] Michael says the win was thrilling. She says it surprised her, considering all the talk she heard about the importance of diversity in the district."Because D.C. has a more diverse population, people hoped for a more diverse winner, but when you look at diversity, it is a diversity of experience, a diversity of thought," she says. "I thought they might choose an African-American Miss D.C."

Um, yeah...so the reference to race is more explicit but any references to her "oppressed-minority status" would seem pretty fucking opaque to me.  Let's see.  The gist of this quote is that she is happy and surprised that she won because she expected, in keeping with the city's racial makeup, that they would choose an African-American to represent.  She figures that that would be diversity.  Then again, maybe "diversity" includes "diversity of experience and thought" and so maybe that's why they chose her over an African-American.  Am I missing something?  Where does she mention being oppressed?  Where does she mention thinking that (outside of her own personal motivation to win, obviously) an African-American shouldn't have won? 

There might be some implied racism in this if it weren't for that "Because D.C. has a more diverse population" bit.  She thought an African-American probably would win because they constitute a majority of the population and the judges would choose someone to reflect that.  Um.  That's racist? 

However.  Excoriating her for being racist isn't enough.  No, why stop there?  This is the Internet--loosen up and just let hellfire blow.  So, the post then calls her stupid (when, actually, both quotes are pretty articulate, I think).  Then they make fun of her for studying in the Johns Hopkins University's graduate program in international relations and planning a career in that field.

So, what the hell am I missing here?  She is in graduate school at Johns Hopkins, so I'm thinking maybe she isn't so stupid.  But, Jezebel has the answer! 

"Or did she just bone one of the deans."  [Hey, Jez, note the improper punctuation.  Maybe you're the one who's stupid.]  Jez thinks she boned the dean.

Gee, I'm glad they figured that out for me.  Of course, she is white, and she is in beauty pageants, so that must be it, right?  A woman who is pretty (I guess--she isn't really my type) and parades around in absurd swimsuit configurations is obviously too stupid to study in a graduate school or have a career.  I'm thinking the only reasonable thing for a woman like that to do is get all barefoot and pregnant and ...yeah.  Great job, Jezebel.

The comments just get worse obviously.  The woman is stupid beyond belief, apparently, not to mention totally ugly, a bad dresser, screwing her way to the top, and, of course, a white supremacist jerkwad.  Alright, I think they don't use "white supremacist," opting for "fascist" instead.  Because she's just like Mussolini, only with boobs. 

So, I dunno.  I don't buy that this lady is a racist or stupid (or fascist, for that matter).  I don't really care about her looks.  And I *seriously* doubt that her studies at Johns Hopkins amount to boning the dean.  And, you know, I just can't really get behind this, "Oh, she's successful so she must be fucking someone!" thing.  Dudes, I think that's one of the attitudes that feminism--at least in most of its incarnations--is trying to move past.  Like, maybe, this chick kicks major international relations ass.  How would I know?  Why would I care? 

You know, people.  If you have a theory that you believe in strongly enough, you can go and find evidence to support it.  You can dredge up "opaque" references that seem to support your theory all over the place.  That don't make it so.  It might be better, or at least more reasonable, to start by reading with an open mind, without a theory in place.  Let the evidence drive the theory, not vice versa. 

Alright, now someone slap me if I ever go read Jezebel again.  A few more posts like that, and I'm going to herniate my carotid.  Or something.

UPDATE:  Waaaiiiit.  I found the indisputable proof of her racism.  Look at these pictures and tell me she isn't the second coming of Hitler himself.  Look at the way she is hugging these kids and reading to them.  It's sickening.  Actually reading her blog a bit convinced that she might be a bit banal, but she is not stupid. 

So, yeah, I know I've hit this topic before.  But over on Jezebel, there has been a raging and entirely tiresome discussion about the so-called "Asian fetish" (in this case, apparently, the usage is being solely restricted to white guys who fetishize Asian women).  The comments are tiring me because unquestioned, implicit assumptions are being thrown around like candy at a parade, and also, importantly, there is a general failure to make a distinction between white guys who actually fetishize Asian women and those who just happen to have one (or even more) Asian girlfriends or just happen to live and teach in an Asian nation.  Not all guys who ever date a Japanese chick is doing it because he thinks she will totally be just like the girls in the tentacle rape comics. 

Anyway, so anytime a topic that remotely touches on racism comes up, there is a segment of the Jezzie commenter squad who goes apeshit about institutionalized racism and white privilege.  I don't think they have fully recovered from their grad school lit seminars.  One of them was kind enough recently to give an answer (finally!) as to what this "white privilege" is supposed to be. 

She says that "as white people in the US, we benefit from white privilege whether we personally discriminate or not."  And I'm thinking, "Hmm, I'm white, or mostly white, and so...when?  When do these benefits come to me?"

She says that the media display more images of white people and more types of white people than people of any other race.  My first response to that is, ummmm, maybe because whites are the majority?  And by quite a long shot, apparently, if you look at the racial makeup of the US as a whole.  My second response is so fucking what?  I have never felt that any of the white people portrayed on TV or in movies have anything at all to do with me personally, except possibly the cast of Roseanne.  Those were getting close to my kind of people.  Now, this is a class issue we're talking about and also a geographic one--the white people portrayed in the media tend to be coastal types (even those who allegedly live inland still seem to be written by coastal types) and overwhelmingly affluent.  So, who cares that their skin is similar to mine--I have nothing in common and no aspiration to have anything in common with those characters.

She says that our political leaders are also overwhelmingly white, and at the national level they certainly are and have always been.  It is a bit silly to point out that they always have been since women and non-white people have only had the vote for the latter portion of the nation's history, so, duh, they didn't hold office when they couldn't vote.  But whatever.  The more salient point is that, again, due to the class issues and geographic issues, our politicians have nothing in common with me or anyone I know either.  Not true, I suppose.  Bill Clinton received oral sex in his office, and I know other men (not all of whom are white) who have done so as well.  And Jimmy Carter was a farmer, and my people are agricultural as well, so I guess there's that.  But what exactly does the color of Ronald Reagan's skin have to do with anything?  I have always been one of the poor people he fucked over so badly, so I really can't see how his pallor privileged me.  I'd like to pull some voodoo economics on his grave, man.

She says teachers assume that we'll be "perform well and go to college."  Yeah, well, maybe some places, but not where I came from.  My first high school was approximately half-chicano and half-not-chicano.  It was a really small town in the middle of the forest in the ass-end of New Mexico.  I'm not sure anyone assumed we'd perform well or go to college.  When I went to the bigger high school my senior year, a pretty high-achieving high school as far as I could tell, it was assumed that anyone who wasn't in that loser group who always ate lunch on their pickup truck tailgates would go to college, regardless of color or creed.  Because not going to college = heating your lunch up on your idling truck engine for the rest of your life in the thinking of the penny loafer wearing, Benetton-ad yips at my second high school.

Anyway, it is probably true in some high schools, but maybe it's also because whites are more likely to go to college.  For one thing, they are more likely to have the family support for doing so.  For another thing, they are more likely to have a tradition in their families and/or great pressure from their families to do so.  Or, wait, let's back up, because we're not talking about all minorities anymore, although we were in the media and politics points, right?  Here, we're only talking about blacks and possibly Hispanics, but mainly blacks.  I mean, seriously, I have never heard anyone, anywhere suggest that Asians are being channeled out of the college-prep track.  If anything, that bias is quite opposite.  See an Asian around?  Automatically assume that he/she will both want to become and be capable of becoming a doctor, engineer, computer programmer, etc.  Everyone knows that Asians are both smarter than whites and have a better work ethic.  Also, I hear they like tentacle rape.

"White is thought of as the default race."  We whites have the great luxury of being the default.  We are not "other."  My first reaction to this is, again, so fucking what?  What great benefit is this?  But then, upon reflection, I think it's actually wrong.  These days we are the great other.  Look on a census form and you've got every possible racial and ethnic identification down there:  "Hawaiian or Pacific Islander," "Asian," "Hispanic," etc.  And then you've got "white."  We're the default, I guess, in that if you're not anything else, then you're white.  But that makes us the other.  You can be one of those specific things or you can be "None of the above" essentially.  And what is that if not alterity?  The default category is "other."  Further, in every grad lit seminar in the land, we are the ones whose voices do not deserve distinction.  It is true, absolutely, that English programs still feature more white writers than "other" writers, but it is also true that every fucking lit major in the country can tell you in pseudo-Derridean jargon how white people are a great lumpen mass, speaking with one hegemonic voice, while every writer of color (and especially ones from former colonies) has an individual, distinct voice that deserves respect, no matter how shitty their writing.  Sorry, I know.  Colored people and women are never shitty writers, I know.  I took enough lit classes to hang my head in shame at my opinion that The Awakening is a stupid novel and that woman in it is really and truly not oppressed.

Also, it seems like a mild contradiction to say that we gain benefit and privilege by skin-color association with people in power and also that we gain benefit and privilege from not even thinking about our skin color and seeing ourselves as a unified race.  If it's going to make a difference to me that all these lily-white fuckwads are running big corporations then I need to identify with them in some way, but the combination of class differences, my contrarian belief that "white" does not constitute a homogenous race, and my belief that the political and corporate worlds are immoral and counter to everything that I aspire to be and do.  Also, I grew up real fucking poor, so economic class means more to me than skin color, in case you hadn't noticed.

Finally, two things:  First, she asserts that we are not judged as a race when one of us does something illegal or immoral.  While it is generally true now that white people are not assumed to be always committing crimes just because most of us are, this was not always true of some types of whites (Italians were often thought to be outrageous criminals back in the day, and some people still feel that way about Russians).  And of course, it seems silly to point this out but, in fact, there are many people who blame all whites for, as they say, the sins of our fathers.  It doesn't matter that you've never held slaves, never colonized a dark land--you're still white, so it's guilt by association.  I don't know.  I don't think that's the approved thinking, but whatever.

And then she says whites have the definite advantage in the justice system, and to that I can only say: WORD.

There has been a running theme to my intense irritation and weariness with people lately.  It has come up obliquely in some of my posts (or rants, whatever) about feminism.  It again reared its head covertly in my disgust with that post about racism that I discussed earlier.  Now, it once again comes sneaking round the corner, only this time the proximal issue is religion and atheism. 

The silent beast that so fatigues me is this:  YOU (whoever you are) ARE NOT SUPERIOR TO ANYONE BASED ON THE COLOR OF YOUR SKIN, YOUR GENITALIA, THE COUNTRY YOU LIVE IN/WERE BORN IN, YOUR FAITH OR LACK THEREOF, YOUR SEXUAL ORIENTATION, OR THE LEVEL OF EDUCATION AND/OR WEALTH YOU HAVE OR HAVE NOT ATTAINED.  FULL MOTHERFUCKING STOP. 

Sorry to shout, but this really rankles.

I know a lot of you probably assume, and it's a fair assumption based on my constant ranting, that I think I am superior to a lot of other people.  But I don't.  I am better educated than most people.  I am far better read than the average person.  I am more intelligent than most people--indeed, if the various standardized tests and grades and all that are an indication, I am more intelligent than 99% of Americans.  I have other strengths, and I know them and use them. 

However, I will be the first to admit that I am lacking in other areas.  I am not forgiving.  I am not gentle or kind, and I lack empathy.  I am moody and temperamental.  I can be utterly asinine.  I know this.

The point is, of course, that this means that no matter how smart and well read I know myself to be, I also know that other people have strengths and goodness-es that I lack.  I admire people who are genuinely kind and forgiving.  I admire people with the spatial intelligence that I sorely lack.  I admire people who exhibit more control over their temper.  My husband is one such person, and I admire him greatly.  We are different, but we both see each other as equal.  EQUAL.

On the racism post I ranted about earlier, I was bothered deeply by the fact that she posited that the experience--both historical and contemporaneous--of "POCs" is more important than that of "whites" whom she indiscriminately lumps together.  This struck me as a simple reversal of the old paradigm, i.e., previously "whites" thought their stories mattered and those of POCs didn't, and that was a form of asserting their superiority.  It dehumanizes the other.  That a black woman would sanction such an assertion in reverse, i.e., sanction an attitude that one group deserves dehumanization, wearied me greatly. 

With feminism, it has long bothered me that there is a strain of vocal feminism that takes as its goal (mostly covertly--most of them would not say this outright, but then neither would the racist discussed above) the repositioning of women as superior with respect to men.  Interestingly, Doris Lessing just commented on this and was dissed by Broadsheet as being in line with the views of the rancid reactionary, Ann Coulter.  Doris Lessing as Ann Coulter...just...no. 

Anyway, there is evidence that this repositioning is happening in certain areas.  For one thing, men are being demonized as likely rapists and pederasts.  Police officers advise children to, if lost, find a woman to help them--not a man.  Nevermind that it is actually a tiny fraction of men who abuse children in any way.  Nevermind that child abuse (though not sexual abuse) happens as often at the hands of a woman as a man and that most children who are killed through abuse or neglect are killed by a woman.  No--kids, find a woman!  And fathers are reporting being subjected to questioning from the police for merely taking their daughters out for lunch.  Young boys are being punished for sexual harassment for touching girls in nearly any way--pinching and hugging are apparently sexual now among the kindergarten set, but only if the pincher or hugger is male.  Men who complain about this obviously want to return to a day when they had the legal right to beat and rape women.

Another strain of feminism asserts that working women (mothers or otherwise) are superior to women whose only work is taking care of their households and children.  But you've all heard me gripe about this enough, I think.

And then just yesterday, this came to my attention.  So, some "freethinkers" in Wisconsin gave a talk called "Religion Kills" and put up a billboard that had an anti-religious message.  That leads this Christian (oh, so Christian!) blogger to broadcast her ressentiment thusly: 

This freedom from religion group pompously struts around, asserting that christians all believe blindly and unscientifically, which is laughable, especially if you've ever debated or listened to a christian / athiest debate. They make a point to prey on human pride that drives us to reject conformity, they are full of charming sarcasm and wit and they are like the cool kid at the party - they exude confidence and intelligence, but inside they are just scared little boys (and girls) who desperately do not want anyone to find out that they can't look themselves in the eyes in the mirror.

This is the voice of a person who thinks she is superior to them because of her faith. (If you plow through the comments thread, you will later find her asserting that you cannot have any morality outside of the Judeo-Christian tradition, among other things).  True, there are atheists who feel superior to her because of her faith in Christ, but as with the racists and the feminists, NO GOOD comes of reversing the hierarchy. 

It's so classic, really.  Let's take a little refresher course in ressentiment. 

Ressentiment is a sense of resentment and hostility directed at that which one identifies as the cause of one's frustration, an assignation of blame for one's frustration. The sense of weakness or inferiority and perhaps jealousy in the face of the "cause" generates a rejecting/justifying value system, or morality, which attacks or denies the perceived source of one's frustration. The ego creates an enemy, to insulate itself from culpability.

I'd say asserting that atheists are by definition immoral (or possibly amoral--she isn't clear) and incapable of looking themselves in the mirror is a very classic case of ressentiment, and it masks a fear and also an inability to admit what the real fear is.  A person who knows herself to be strong has no need of ressentiment or this kind of deep hatred against a group.  It has always amazed me when Christians assert the profound strength and truth of their faith in one breath and then show great delectation in how nonbelievers will be punished in the Last Judgment in the next.  That is a revenge fantasy, and in some of the early American Christian sermons (Cotton Mather and that ilk), the excitement at imagining this revenge is palpable.  If your faith is strong and you honestly believe Christ is your savior, you ought have no special desire or need to hate others or delight in their damnation.

Anyway, the connecting thread here is a consuming need and desire not for equality but for a mere reversal of the traditional paradigm.  Being a person of color becomes superior to (in moral terms) being white.  Being female becomes superior to being male.  Being Christian becomes superior to being "freethinking."  (Actually this last one is exceptional because that already is the dominant paradigm in North American society...so...whence the ressentiment?) To me, that's just a different side of the same oppressive coin. 

In contrast to these positions that I find reprehensible, I am for equality.  Legally, there should be absolute equality, although this is often easier to postulate than to achieve (what does it mean for men and women to have equal reproductive rights, for example?).  In personal terms, I try to see each individual as an individual rather than thinking, "Oh, he's a (member of X group)."  I try to live by the ethical positions elaborated by Heidegger, Buber, Borgmann, and Charles Taylor with a healthy dose of Camus, Aristotle, and Nietzsche thrown in (incidentally, many of them didn't specifically write works of ethics--but I believe that ethical principles are derivable from the ontological frameworks, i.e., knowing our relationships with one another and the world implies an ethics.  Of course, I also believe ethics are implied by such diverse sources as the poetry of Rilke and contemplation of the night sky, so....I could be a little crazey).

But, you say, but!  You, GinBaby, are a known misanthropist!  Yes, this is true.  I dislike nearly all people and think that we probably are, in fact, a virus with shoes.  Mostly I dislike people because I find most of their little weaknesses and insecurities and petty competitiveness to be tiresome.  I don't mean weaknesses of the sort that, say, Gabriel Garcia Marquez characters have, which are charming, or the general sort in which we are not all equally good at all things.  By "weaknesses" here, I mean the incapacity or unwillingness to know oneself completely, to stand strong in the face of opposition, to question received wisdom and authority, to be free for rather than merely free from, to face uncomfortable truths.  These things--jealousy, ressentiment, envy, petty bickering, ego stroking--I just do not have the energy for--or rather I don't have the will to give energy to these things. 

We would be a better society--both nationally and globally--if we all were strong enough to give up our little prejudices and hatreds and insecurities because then we might stop feeling such a pressing need to treat other people like shit.

I apologize for the length of this post. But your brevity does not make you superior.  Wink. 

Now, anyone who knows us very well knows that my husband and I don't have normal conversations.  For one thing, they are randomly bilingual.  For another thing, much of what he says to me is nonverbal, and I just know what he means because I've lived with the laconic bastard for so long.  Finally, we have a tendency to start a conversation, drop it, both silently ponder it for a while (hours, days, weeks) and then just pick it up again exactly where we left off as if no time had elapsed. 

Last night while I was damn drunk (proof:  I was chatting to Zack, and I kept typing stuff like "yer cuuuuuute"--real articulate), I got angry at the "debate" going on over at this post.  The point of the post and the ensuing "debate" (I'm putting debate in quotation marks because that is not a debate; it's a farce.) is that white people (that's me!) are privileged in America and we're racists and we're all white and all the same and so forth.  She wants to end racism by, uh, apparently by starting a war with whites (which, dude, we outnumber you...bad idea) or, in lieu of that, getting whites to admit that, yes, we are bad people, incapable of distinguishing a Kenyan from a Senegalese (one of them is Anglophone, one is Francophone--see how I did that?  I defined them in terms of their colonial history.  I am the oppressor!) or a Korean from a Filipino.  Because, see, when you're a "person of color" (her term, not mine), your cultural background and your past matter; when you're white, they don't.  She even, much to my glee (sorry, Shmuel), lumps the Jews in with us whiteys and asserts that they, too, can't understand the experience of racial discrimination in America.  Hee heeeeee.  That's funny.  Jews don't understand being oppressed?  HA!  Alright, rockin'. 

[Just for the record, the above is an extremely flippant characterization of the post and the ensuing "debate."]

So, anyway, I got angry.  My husband, a POC himself as y'all know, came home about 1:30 am by which time I was giddily sloshed and angry and depressed and laughing my ass off all at the same time (the latter, of course, was due to the characterization of the Jews as privileged and also to my extremely articulate ["yer niiiiiiice"] discussion with Zack).  I said, "Hey, honey, you think I'm a rashist?"

T:  giving me WTF? look.  How much beer did you drink?

Me:  Dunno.  You want one?  I think there's some left.  I'm drinking your beer now.

T:  Maybe you should come to bed. 

Me:  Can't.  Busy.  Talkin bout ninjas.

T:  ...giving me that put-upon look that says, "why did I marry this freaky gaijin?  what did I do to deserve this?"

Me:  So, imma rashist?

T:  Huh? 

Me:  This lady says you're a "person of color."

T:  I'm tired.

Me:  You like that?  "Person of color"?

T:  looking dubiously at his arms.  Color? 

Me:  Yah, yer brown.  And now you're the gaijin, too.  I have color, though!  I'm pinkish.

T:  White, like rice.  That's why I like you.  It isn't a meal without rice.

Me:  So, what does that make [our son]?  Crosshatching?

T:  OK, I'm going to bed.

...

T:  You know, since we've been here (in the States), it doesn't seem like white people care about my skin color.  It is irritating though, because around here all the brown people are Mexican, so they think I am too, and they start speaking Spanish to me, and I don't understand.  If they figure out I'm not Mexican, they think (American) Indian or maybe Chinese.

Me:  Ni hao! 

T:  telling me to shutup with his eyes

Me:  Oh, and you know, Mexicans are counted as "white" in most of the data.  You can't be Mexican, as you are clearly brown, not white. 

T:  They're the same color I am. 

Me:  Yeh, but they speak Spanish, while you speak one of those crazy "Asian" languages.  See?

T:  ....?

Me:  Yeh, yeh.  So, you think I'm a racist? 

T:  I don't even know why you worry about it.  This isn't worth thinking about.

Me:  Ah, because this kind of shit bugs me.  The past counts for this group, but not for this one.  Because she thinks I'm X, Y, and Z because of the color of my skin which is exactly what racism is and what she's theoretically railing against.  Because I have no idea what this great "privilege" is that I'm supposed to have from my lovely skin tone--we were really fuckin poor, I worked my ass off at two or three jobs a semester to put myself through college...I don't care that the President has roughly the same color skin as I do--it doesn't mean anything at all, as we have nothing else in common, and anyway...

T:  I think I've heard this before.  (Actually, what he said, with a deep sigh, is "mata ka?" which just means "Again?")

Me:  Yah, sorry.  I know.  So, my handsome person of color...

T:  You should call me "Chinese" or something.  "Hey, Korean!"

Me:  laughing   Well, that would explain your fucked-up Japanese* AND the love of kimchi.  You can call me cracker.  Oh, and also, she keeps saying "Asians."

T:  laughing.  Yeah, we're all the same.

Me:  Well, you do all have the shiny black hair.

T:  Mine's falling out.

Me:  Damn.  I need a younger man then.  A younger person of color man.

T:  You said Zack's only 20.

Me:  He white.  White men bad.

T:  Too bad then.  What about that 17-year-old [Mister Lokii]?

Me:  He is an oppressed person of color. And I believe he has a thick head of shiny black hair.

T:  There you go then.

Me:  So, what about this little man (our son).  White or person of color?

T:  Color.

Me:  You think so?  I don't think it matters because he's too handsome for a category.

Son:  White!  He's white!

T & Me:  laughing.  That settles it then.  White you are, boy.  With all its attendant privileges.  Off to Harvard with ye.

*About his fucked-up Japanese.  Seriously, it's messed up.  This isn't going to mean much to you people who don't speak Japanese, but, ah, I guess it might mean something to Kimura.  He says "sukiku nai" instead of "suki ja nai" and "kireku nai" instead of "kirei ja nai."  Drives me insane.  My son is going to think that's proper Nihongo.  Grrr.