So I had a somewhat interesting dialogue with my sister last night. I don't remember exactly how it began, but it quickly became a discussion of racism. I'm fairly certain that I brought up the term, whereupon my sister objected to its usage -- "racism", she said, entails by definition a pronounced hatred for the object of one's racist feelings, whereas she felt that "stereotyping" more properly corresponded to the position that I was describing. She admitted that in most cases racism is a consequence of stereotyping -- for example, Person A believes a certain stereotype about a group and therefore hates that group -- but that stereotypes are not necessary to justify racist beliefs because the primary criterion for racism is hated -- and hatred can occur without justification.

In my view, however, all stereotypes concerning "race", insofar as people largely believe them to obtain in all cases, constitute racism. For example, even if Person B believes that all persons of Asian descent are fantastic at math and harbors no ill will towards Asians as a result (Person B may even enthusiastically seek out an Asian tutor for his multivariable calculus course), I would maintain that Person B holds a racist belief because Person B believes that "race" is a necessary determinant of certain personality traits and individual strengths, thereby alleging that attention to the color of a person's skin or his/her apparent ethnic background is an effective way of learning more about him/her. (In most modern cases, the emphasis is placed on "culture" rather than "race" -- but given that most people who make these arguments appear to believe that "race" and "culture" are necessarily linked, that does not resolve the difficulty.)

So much like a fundamentalist believes in the value and worth of various fundamental tenets, I use the term "racist" to describe someone who believes in the value and worth of "race" as a means of categorizing individuals. For example, I would argue that even a relatively empty statement like "I hate all black people" -- even if this hatred is unjustified even in the mind of the speaker -- is racist, not because it voices hatred but because it asserts that the color of a person's skin is sufficient motivation for responding to that individual in any predetermined fashion. And though hateful attitudes and harmful effects are not necessary criteria for racist statements, I maintain that all such statements are necessarily damaging because they devalue the worth of individuals and preclude the possibility of a great many personal relationships that rely upon mutual understanding between individuals. But I've said this before, yes?

The more interesting part of the discussion, however, occurred when I stated in passing that all racism implies ignorance on the part of the racist. It was hardly the crux of the argument -- I took it to be a fairly obvious statement -- but it drew marked opposition from my sister and sent us off on a tangent that quickly became the focus of the conversation. Basically, it became a more abstract discussion of whether immoral agents are necessarily ignorant, assuming that acting rightly is in everyone's best interests. And here both of us were clearly frustrated the other's position: I argued that the statement that one who acts wrongly is, on some level, ignorant of the violated moral truth is tautological, whereas my sister felt just as strongly that people can and often do know better and still choose to behave wrongly because they simply "do not care." So upon reaching this point in the conversation -- at first I had thought that she was arguing from a relativist position and that we disagreed on the existence of moral truths -- I concluded that the difficulty arose from a semantic dispute regarding what knowledge entails and was prepared to drop the subject; semantic disputes are not so much disagreements as they are initial misunderstandings, and once both sides recognize that they are, in fact, arguing semantics, there is little left to discuss.

But then my sister said, at the close of the discussion, "I think ignorance is an excuse" -- whereupon I realized that our heated resistance to each other's positions didn't stem from what we were actually saying, but because of the other propositions we believed that the opposing positions entailed. In my case, I at first believed that my sister was suggesting that (given that she explicitly stated that she frankly doesn't care about a lot of things that she thinks she should) "not caring" was a morally defensible position -- hence my initial belief that she was voicing a relativistic claim. For her part, my sister believed (and we both agreed upon this conclusion in the extension of the conversation that ensued; I don't write this in order to make myself out to be the less fundamentally judgmental interlocutor) I was actually being rather charitable regarding people's moral shortcomings.

And thinking about it, I suppose that on some level we recognized the other's position as a threat to our own respective worldviews and how they influence our actions. It was rather odd to hear anyone say, to me, that she lacked my faith in humanity. But while I don't have a ton of faith in humanity either, I must believe on some level that people can be influenced for the better; even my most scathing criticisms of relatively inconsequential media are rooted in a desire to benefit others by either convincing them to adopt more thoughtful and worthwhile positions or by voicing my agreement with and thereby supporting the small minority of individuals who already hold those positions. (One might argue that my apparent belief that my positions are right entails a certain arrogance on my part, but I generally think my positions through to the point where I adopt them because I believe that, objectively speaking, they are correct -- not simply because they are mine.)

My sister, on the other hand, freely admits to having committed a number of wicked deeds -- and though she does not appear to believe that her actions were right, I suspect that she regards them as being justifiable because, in her view, the objects of her malevolent actions have been just as wicked to her. (For example, my sister has justified the majority of her transgressions against me by alleging that I have expressly attempted to kill her on several occasions, primarily citing conflicts that occured during the very early childhood years that I can no longer remember. If she truly believes that I -- or anyone, for that matter -- could fully understand the import and ramifications of murder at age three and knowingly act with intent to end her life, I suppose it's no wonder that she would telephone the police and affect a horribly exaggerated performance for the sole purpose of harming me. Nor is it terribly surprising that she would fail to understand why I was so hurt by her actions -- though it does seem somewhat odd, given that that was her apparent motivation for acting -- as she appears to expect such behavior from people and is thereby unmoved or even amused when her beliefs are confirmed.) Yet if she truly believed that people were largely ignorant of their misdeeds, that would arguably require her to regret her past actions and refrain from willfully harming others in the future. And that would probably make her a lot less happy, since ultimately believing that people are irredeemable assholes entails a lot less personal responsibility and obligation to affect anyone for the better. It's a relatively carefree position.

One of the most frequent criticisms brought against me is that I am a very critical and judgmental person. It is a claim that I have never denied, as I believe that it is largely impossible to refrain from judging others -- and, for that reason, we should instead focus on judging rightly and thoroughly and thoughtfully and sharing our judgments in the hopes that others will benefit from them. And whereas I can't recall my sister having ever expressed a belief that people should not judge others, I wonder how many of the people who do actually adopt a similar position, which is not so much a non-judgmental view as it is an absolutely judgmental one that precludes a belief in the ability of people to improve. I recognize that, at least in the absence of the more vicious active components of my sister's position, the latter would probably result in a more outwardly peaceful and gratifying state of affairs, but isn't improvement worth a certain degree of conflict? It's true that a great deal of social discord results from people's clashes with each other over various moral issues, but I think that the difficulty results not from the fact that people judge, but rather that they largely lack the intelligence or will to formulate well thought-out arguments and the mutual respect required to give careful consideration to the viewpoints of their opponents. Or maybe, like my sister claims, they just plain don't care about actual advancement.