Gladwell: Defining A Racist

You beat me to it, and I hope you get the discussion that this deservers. Yes, it's about the Richards debacle (again) but it's more about Racism and general and what it means to be a racist.

I think he makes some really great points and I suspect that some will feel as though he goes too easy on Richards.

Really interesting read. I don't, however, agree that for something to be racist it has to first be malicious. How many civilizations over the course of history felt they were doing conquored people a favor by enslaving them? Because they were too stupid and/or lazy to govern themselves? Belief in that idea is racist, whether or not it is intentionally malicious.

And so, while the Irwin comment was seemingly not laced with any hate whatsoever, I think there is a very good case that it can be taken as a racist remark.

I wasn't familiar with Gladwell, but I've now subcribed to the feed. The guy talks sense! Excellent seed, thanks

When I was a little kid, in the north, the only "nice" way to talk about the black race was to use the term "Negro", later, probably in my teens the term "colored people" was more appropriate than Negro. Still later we used "Blacks" during the 60's, then came "African Americans". I am not real sure what the current politically correct term is but I find it increasingly unnecessary to use an indicator of race in writing or speech unless there is some specific need to do so. BTW, down south in my late teens, the polite term was "Negra" among whites and "@!$%#" among blacks. How words came to have the weight of sticks and stones is a concept I refuse to consider.

If any of you, of one race or another, is concerned about what I say, please consider my plight. My extended family includes at least one full blooded member of each race. I am not beyond using unflattering terms in speaking or writing to my family members but find it increasingly difficult to do so in public. I also find my family members don't have any problem calling me "gaijin", "whitey", "honky" , "frog" (mostly French), and myriad other little pet names. (My favorite is "Akabu" from the Okinawan for RedHead.

I would appreciate comments and articles among Newsviners as to what should be our style. Could it be we should all be calling each other "citizen" or "comrade" or "friend" (Quaker) or "Pardner" (Texan?)?

i dont agree with much of gladwell's essay.

first - i disagree about his assessment of the content of the message. while it's true (obviously) that content goes a long way to define the message's information, i dont think that gladwell has captured this idea very well in this context. for instance, he uses the example:

To call someone a @!$%# is not as a bad as arguing that black people have lower intelligence than whites. To make a targetted claim is worse than calling a name.

those are arguable points, not to be taken at face value. it's easier to have an open debate with people who are clear about their opinions, for instance. and a targeted claim is more likely to draw appropriate attention than simply using a name. name-calling is an easy way, in fact, to hide very dangerous racism behind attempted irony or humor.

second, his final 2 points (intention and conviction) are ephemeral terms which the audience can have little to no real information about. so how useful are those points in defining racism?

racism is what it is. different levels or degrees of racism, i think, can be argued more effectively by shifting the focus from the person and the precise words he/she used to the dynamics of the speaker and audience, whatever they may be (writers, readers, comics, listeners, musicians, fans, etc).

finally, where do we go from here? do we need to validate people's perceptions of others' behavior to this degree? if a person was offended, there was a mistake in the communication. period. either the sender of the message has a flawed view or presented it poorly, and the same can be said about the recipient of the message. we could argue for centuries about who was right and who was wrong, but i'm not sure that we'll progress very far.

to go back a paragraph, wouldnt it be more valuable to concentrate on the concrete facts that we know and only address them to the degree that we can? for instance, richards said some things which, to many, many people, would be considered racist. he's making an attempt to apologize, and it's not going over very well. are these efforts to define racism a way of escaping the grim reality that someone as previously so well-perceived as richards can be racist? are we trying to validate the feelings of the audience? isnt that, in and of itself, a form of racism?

we cant honestly hope to dissect each and every possible act of racism. the fact is, people who are in high-risk groups of targets of racism experience these kinds of things every day. in that way, the close attention paid to this event might seem a bit meaningless. whether or not richards is racist is irrelevant. i think he is, personally. but my opinion is irrelevant. vastly more important is how that kind of speech, regardless of content, intent or conviction, makes people feel and/or expands the acceptance of racism in general. at this point, the intent, the conviction and the content is gone. what is left is another instance of someone acting like an @!$%# about a group of people superficially different from the @!$%#. whats critical at this point isnt defining the racist (or the not-racist), but trying to make sure that the fallout, valid or not, is productive and helpful.

basically, i disagree with the seeded essay, question its value and have concerns about its intent.

While Gladwell wrote an interesting article, I think he missed a major factor about racism and that is the biases that created it. Biases can be large and small. An example of a small bias would be thinking that dreadlocks are disgusting. An example of a large bias would be having nothing to do with people who have dreadlocks.

Just as biases are taught, biases can be unlearned - if the person is willing to change.

Firsty raised a good point in shifting the focus to the audience. I think the person being spoken or written to and how he/she thinks about a subject needs to be considered. If an example is needed, just go to an article that features a white cop shotting a black person or an article about slavery.

Oldfogey also made a good point with the changing perception or definitions of words. If you don't keep up with the new perception/definition then a person can be labled a racist with being one. Sometimes being politically correct can mask a bias without the person realizing it.