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reddit comment on racism
A comment I wrote on reddit got posted to "bestof", for the first time (after I mentioned the idea, in response to a commenter who said it was one of the best comments they'd ever read o reddit). Based on some of the responses it got, I feel like I really succeeded in what I was trying to say, and I'd like to get it out to a wider audience. To make sense of the comment, though, it helps if you first read the original post I was responding to: Someone confessing a blatantly racist outburst.
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Any idea why that anonymous poster wanted to be yelled at? S/he messed up and knew it before posting.
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This isn't a matter of racism. Racism is something one paints with a broad brush. Racism is wrong. Being a colored person myself, trust me, I've lived on the receiving end of a fair share of racism.
What the OP on reddit described wasn't racism. It was reality. It was a story about a person acting like a jackass and being responded to in kind.
If the kid was white instead of black and responded so disrespectfully, they should have received the mini-speech about how they'd better start saving up for that double-wide trailer and develop an affinity for Coors Light and corndogs and Nascar, etc.
Stereotypes wouldn't exist if SO many people didn't actually behave in such ways. Why do we keep pretending like this truth doesn't exist and that "racism" is something different than plain old human pattern recognition?
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Perhaps because so many stereotypes have absolutely no basis in reality, and are instead a weak and lazy indulgence? Not to mention the many stereotypes that help to create the reality that they claim to reflect...
So much for "truth".
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That being said, I'm not sure what this person said wasn't racist, or at least unacceptably racial in content. Is going to the "you people" place ever okay? Is it ever acceptable a white person ever suggest to a person of color that his conduct is an example of the worst stereotypes about his race, and tell him to shape up? I acknowledge a meaningful distinction between that kind of statement and the typical racist "well, all blacks/Mexicans/Irish are lazy/violent/stupid," but I'm not sure using negative stereotypes to shame people is ever appropriate.
Ultimately I think this is one of those cases where it is the position of the speaker, rather than the content of the speech, that makes it inappropriate and potentially racist. As a woman, I could pull a younger female colleague aside and say "Honey, the way you dress is sexually provocative and you might want to cover up a little more if you want to be taken seriously." I might, in fact, be expected to do so. If a man said that it would be view at least as sexist and very possibly as actionable sexual harassment, even if it was said with the exact same good intentions. If a black man had pulled that little boy aside and said exactly the same thing we wouldn't say it was racist, but that doesn't necessarily make it okay for a white man to say it.
So I think what we have here is a distinction between statements that are racist per se, and statements that are racist only because of their larger social context.
Finally, apropos nothing in particular, the word "racist" is so loaded I was uncomfortable using it in the comment because, regardless, I don't think the OP deserves to be sent to the Island of Racist Assholes. I think he was just someone who got really mad and landed a couple of punches below the belt. Not okay, but totally understandable and forgivable.
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I agree, and I also think that statement is incomplete. Racism's pervasiveness lent some extra punches to what he did, and that's a big part of why I wrote my comment: it's the way racism sneaks in, with its unfortunate extra context, to change the effects of actions that might've happened without racism. Sometimes even perfectly innocent or well-meaning actions, or ones that would be neutral outside this context. Which is another angle on some of the same things you said earlier in your comment. I think the way it applies to this last bit, though, is that even though he was in one sense "just" someone who happened to get mad and lash out inappropriately, the fact that when *he* does it to *that* kid it takes on this extra context, shows why he has an extra responsibility to learn about that context and to take some other actions to counteract it.
Here's what I said to him.
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but racism and classism aren't exactly comprable. . . intersectional, yes, but not really comprable.
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agh. because it is. racism is a system of illegitimate domination and hierarchy - hardly just another facet of "human nature."