A Bit Of A Gripe

[poliphilo]

I understand that racists are not necessarily bad people- just frightened ones- afraid of difference, afraid of the unfamiliar. 

This doesn't mitigate the fact that racism is profoundly stupid- and destructive of civil society.

You have racist views.  Fine.  Please keep them to yourself.

But if you talk to me in ways that assume that I share your views don't be surprised if I take it as a personal  insult.

Comments

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

For me, it's been the downside of the Obama administration: I really did not know just how racist the people around me were until this past year.

My parents are profoundly and proudly racist. I think until Obama came along, my mother tried to hide her true feelings, but now she's screaming about the "niggers" taking over, loud and proud. My sister is also racist and so is her husband.

I strongly suspect that here, in rural Virginia, most all conservative whites are racist, at least to some degree, and probably a fair number of whites that otherwise associate with the Democratic party, too. It's also painfully obvious now just how racist I was myself, in my youth.

I have never been ashamed of who I am, before, but that's how I feel. I'm ashamed of my family, my schoolmates, my relatives, and most all my neighbors.

And I am ashamed of having excused their toxic beliefs and behaviour for so very long.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I've been around my in-laws a lot recently- and it's reminded me why- in normal circumstances- I keep my distance. They're decent, kindly people but I find their baseline racism profoundly dispiriting.

I don't want to be shouting at them- but I find it hard to just smile and nod along- and yesterday I lost my rag.

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

I suppose my parents are decent enough. To be honest, I'm not sure, anymore. How can one reasonably expect decency from people whose world view is, for all intents and purposes, bat-shit insane?

And I really don't think I'm exaggerating. My father, along with millions of other Republicans these days, actually believes that Obama is an avowed Communist and is organizing a secret army that will round up all the "decent people" - ie, right-thinking whites - and send them to concentration camps being built right by the Federal Emergency Management Administration.

After an hour or so in his presence, I just want to kill him or kill myself - mostly, myself.

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

Millions of Republicans? Literally? Funny -- I hang out with a lot of Republicans, and I've never heard that expressed by any of them. I'm sure there are some fever-swamps, but I don't think they're as densely populated as you fear.

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

I don't think the figure is that far-fetched, really. Glenn Beck's viewership was up in the millions last year and that's where my father heard those claims and worse.

While I happily accept that you and yours are quite above such low-brow fare, I think it naive to imagine the same is true of movement conservatives generally.

[(Anonymous)]

I also think it's inaccurate to assume that all of Beck's viewers take everything on the show uncritically. As I said, I'm sure there are fever swamps, but at the couple of Tea Parties I dropped in on the fringes were just that -- on the fringe.

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

I also think it's inaccurate to assume that all of Beck's viewers take everything on the show uncritically.

Begs the question, doesn't it? If Becks viewers had any appreciable capacity for critical thought, why should they be watching Glenn Beck?

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

And for the sake of those blissfully uninformed about Glenn Beck, the man rather famously stated last year, on his Murdoch-funded, Fox News television show, that President Obama had a "deep seated hatred of white people".

In the racially charged atmosphere of the Republican party, it may not have been the exact equivalent of shouting fire in a crowded theater, but it was too damned close for comfort and inexcusable by any decent standard of political discourse. As such, Glenn Beck and the propaganda he produces for the Republican party are very much on-topic in a discussion of racism.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I suppose it's entirely possible to be a decent, kindly person and yet entirely stupid and gullible.

[daisytells.livejournal.com]

It is that! When I was involved in the Civil Rights movement over here, I was amazed at all the "nice" people who had attitudes like the one in which they stated "Well, the 'colored' are entitled to some rights after all -- at least the 'nice ones' are."
There was a lot of that among those majority people who were not actively and nastily fighting the Civil Rights movement in the streets.
Suffice to say that during the recent presidential campaign some of those very persons surfaced again, this time with reservations that "A black president probably won't get enough support to get anything done." That seems to have become a self-fulfilling prophecy, except for the fact that Obama is a Democrat, and that it is Republicans who are bucking his every effort. Not at all a racial issue, even though some would make it so.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It's the "some of my best friends are black" syndrome.

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

I hope so. Stupidity can be compartmentalized, such that someone who is ordinarily competent in some areas may be dumber than a box of rocks in others. Perhaps decency works that way too.

At any rate, these particular racists happen to be my parents and relatives and the chances of obtaining a fresher, more palatable bunch this late in the game are rather slim.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It's like the nazis. They spent the day exterminating Jews, then went home and were kind to their dogs.

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

Yes, however uncomfortable such images make us. I remember reading about how Mengele cried when his wolfhound was killed by the electric fence at Auschwitz.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Jonathan Littel's novel The Kindly Ones demonstrates how it was perfectly possible to be an SS officer and at the same time a person of genuine sensibility

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

How disturbing. I think it's difficult to embrace such things, the notion that evil might not be consistent, in terms of behavior, and never as obvious to the eye as we imagine. Then again, there seems to be a constant drumbeat of reminders, while we remain somewhat willfully oblivious to the facts. I live next door to a veteran of the war in Vietnam. Jim is a kind and gentle old fellow, but the tales of his part in a very dirty war tell a different story.

[veronica-milvus.livejournal.com]

You tell them Tony! There are some things one can't just "let go".

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Yes, but I don't feel particularly brave telling an 80 year old woman that her ideas stink....

[treehavn.livejournal.com]

...or me, telling my 70-something mother in law that 'the government' haven't 'made' people like you racist, you had it in you all along. And no, that woman in the post office isn't wearing a sari 'just to spite you'...

I just ignore it now, and try to move her base whinging onto generalised topics. And I feel a bit of a coward.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I keep away from my in-laws as much as I can- which saves explosions- but this past week- with my father-in-law being in hospital- I've seen a lot of them.

[daisytells.livejournal.com]

Several of my own elderly relatives have a lot of that old attitude, disguised as tolerance. A quote from my own mother back when she was still working: "I work with several 'colored' women -- nice ones, though...."

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Yes, my in-laws think in those terms. My pa-in-law said the other day that- since they're here- he believes in being nice to the Asians- but he wishes they'd all go home.

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

I think that's it exactly: the idea of a shouting match with an eighty-year-old retiree is unseemly, to say the least.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Also, they don't really understand what all the fuss is about.

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

Indeed.

[ideealisme.livejournal.com]

sometimes if people are cunning with their packaging it's hard to distinguish racism for so-called "fair comment".

Like, I was on a business forum recently and one of the biggest contributors posted this on their blog: http://www.kro.ie/blog/2009/12/5-reasons-not-to-outsource-web.html#links
ostensibly sounding very logical and reasonable but for me it has the whiff of "the natives are misbehaving" - I don't like it in my gut. There's more than a whiff of superiority there.
Maybe I'm sensitive to this because I'm working in reverse - outsourcing remotely to someone in Asia. It's hard work, esp when the times are not in sync. I don't think it's anything to do with "culture".

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

That's a tricky one to unpick. It's possible the blogger is telling it exactly as it is- and Indian IT workers are inferior to Irish ones- but the thing does give off a nasty smell.

These days the racists have learned to be cunning.

[ideealisme.livejournal.com]

I go by that eeeeeeeyeeeh feeling in my gut when trying to figure out if something's racist or not. I'm getting it now.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Yes, always trust your gut.

[tinceiri.livejournal.com]

I've had to deal with too many skinheads in the United States - I don't have any tolerance for racism at all. It's very hard for me not to explode on the spot.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Scratch a seemingly lovely old lady or gentleman and discover an unthinking racist. I find it terribly dispiriting.

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

I think back to some of the elderly in my family. Many of them had unusually tolerant views, given the times in which they were raised. I had a whole contingent of aunties of my great-grandmother's generation (born in the 1860s and 1870s) who stayed in their neighborhood through several successive migrations -- from German to eastern European various, to eastern European Jewish, to African Americans -- and for whom proximity had bred acceptance. They looked after their neighbors, who in turn looked after them.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

In practice my in-laws are quite liberal. For example, they've been very good with our friends from Cameroon. It's just their views that are appalling.