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? (more...)

Have you ever had a dialogue, experience -- et cetera -- that left you wholly convinced that you are not long for this world: and that this is not such a bad thing, because there is not and never will be any place where you will ever be welcome, that you never have and never will belong among any lands or people anywhere in this life?

I believe the entirety of my time here has been comprised of such incidents.

Hope y'all have been well. Still hard at work with my writing projects -- given that the longer one was primarily and obviously based on my personal experiences, I've decided to turn it into an avowed memoir. That means that (for the most part), the science fiction elements and mythological backstories are out, but there should still be room for social commentary (a la the discussion below, but peppered with my own experiences) and a bit of humor. As much humor as can be in the life story of a suicidal wackjob constantly plotting his own demise, anyway. 7K words so far and counting.

Posted the first Hot Flash in a while over on Scary-Crayon, too, so check that out if you find my drawings and comments to be amusing and don't mind minor Silent Hill spoilers, since that's the subject of the latest comic. See the attendant entry in the SC blog for my assessment of the film.

On another note, I was looking for an article/transcript from an interview with James Earl Jones that one of my commenters referenced and came across the following film quote:

But you think of yourself as a colored man. I think of myself as a man.

That was from Guess Who's Coming To Dinner, released in 1967: and while I go even farther than that -- I think of myself as Wes, id est, myself -- I want to know what the hell happened to that progressive mentality. I listened to Cornel West's annual sermon at Howard University this morning, and while he made a few good points and employed a number of humorous analogies, I couldn't help but notice that throughout the speech he constantly and consistently referred to people with respect to the color of their skin -- except he was hardly employing the term in a purely descriptive fashion. He lavished praise upon Tavis Smiley's new book, The Covenant with Black America, but given that it obviously continues to regard individuals as being "black people" first and foremost -- or at least fails to address the issue at all -- I am convinced that its effect on the nation, if it has any lasting effect, will be decidedly negative.

In the midst of one supposedly racially motivated controversy, I once wrote to the president of the Concerned Black Students at Yale group and asked if they might better serve their aims by encouraging all students to get involved in these issues. I questioned whether a group called Concerned Students at Yale, with the right kind of direction, might have more success. She wrote back that the organization was so named because its intent was to explicitly exclude students who were not part of what she called "the Black Family." She described the actions of the group as being a "for us by us" movement. But if that's how these people think, why should anyone else care? How does that mentality encourage progress? As long as the concept of racial separatism -- which, arguably, necessarily attends the concept of race -- is championed, there will be no progress in this country.

So I want to know why so many supposedly smart and educated people are unable to grasp the simple concept that the color of one's skin should not define one's behavior, interests, or causes. If the problems in our society are to be solved, it will not be because of appeals to racial brotherhood and unity, but because all people recognize that something is wrong and needs to change. I am sick of hearing community leaders preface their speeches by stating what "we as black people" should do. I have no doubt that Smiley's book will be touted as being a book that no black home should be without, but how about it being a book that every person committed to social justice should read? Why not make an appeal to persons with compassion for their fellows and an interest in improving the nation across the board? Perhaps, like Hitler, these people feel that the concept of race is a far more powerful tool for promoting unity: but the Nazi regime didn't exactly do away with racism, did it?

I was looking for a statement that I actually think came from President Bush -- something to the effect that there shouldn't be a black or white America, just America -- but I couldn't find it. When I keyed "there should not be a black america" into Google, I didn't get a single hit. So let this be the first. People should not define themselves and others with respect to the color of their skin, nor should they let themselves be so defined, nor should they privilege shared skin color over personal interests, beliefs, etc., when grouping themselves. There should not be a black America. And while I recognize that to some extent the heavy concentrations of so-called minorities in inner-city environments encourages that mentality, the abolition of these ideological racial divisions doesn't even appear to be an intended goal of these so-called activists' progressive plans. It should be.

Hopefully that'll tide y'all over until my next post. Ja ne!

Those of you used to chatting with me on AIM may have noticed that I haven't been around too much lately. That is because I'd kind of gotten used to using the laptop as my primary computing device, and then I discovered... a stuck/dead pixel. Actually, there may be several of them in the same vicinity, but one is darker than the others and really really bugs me. Could it always have been there? I don't know, but now that I've noticed it I can't take my bloody eyes off of it. Hell, it's basically rendered the rightmost 150 pixels of my monitor useless, since I'm running all of my program windows dragged that much to the left to avoid making it show up on white backgrounds. I hate it. But as far as I've been able to discern, there's nothing that can be done about it. So I haven't been using the laptop much and have only been using the desktop for work (not much these days) and to check e-mail. It kinda sucks -- this thing cost $4K and I can hardly stand to use it now. What a waste.

Anyway, since my laptop looks almost exactly like Foamy's laptop and is (also) a Dell, I found the latest Ill Will Press cartoon (Tech-Support III) to be especially relevant (and fairly humorous, especially given that I have had similarly infuriating experiences with outsourced Dell tech support since getting the laptop). Unfortunately, the creator isn't taking e-mails so I can't ask him if Dell actually gave him a working solution.

Don't buy a Dell.

Couldn't let the month go by without commenting at length on the subject, could we? Actually, I'd very much intended to, but then I happened to catch the latter half of this "That's So Raven" episode. If you get around to reading it, lemme know what you think of the article. Later!