No Longer Caring?

 

Arthur Koestler wrote that after the nonaggression pact, he no longer cared whether Hitler’s allies called him a counterrevolutionary.   We may be  getting to a point where many people in this country decide they no longer care whether the allies of America hating looters and arsonists call them racists. It would be a good thing,  That trick and threat of the left has provided cover for a lot of wrong thinking, false claims, and bad actions.

We have scoundrels preaching that individualism, rationality and objectivity, a belief in hard work, self reliance, planning for the future, civility, and respect for the property of others are “white male” traits, inappropriate for and deleterious to non- whites and getting their actual racist nonsense accepted in surprising places including the Smithsonian. We have “educators” indoctrinating  white children to feel guilty because of their race. We have attacks on people such as Thomas Jefferson, when in fact Jefferson is honored for his achievements and his ideas and principles, not for his failures to live up to them.  We have demands for reparations to black people for slavery  which have  no more sense or justification than would an ultimatum  from today’s Englishmen to Italians for a payoff for Caesar’s conquest. We have assertions of white privilege and systematic anti-black racism when the main systems  in government,  education,  and corporations  are explicitly structured  for black privilege through affirmative action quotas, lower admission standards, contract set asides, and so on.

Most important we have a pervasive attempt to make white Americans accept undeserved guilt.  The leftists want to make people feel guilty to make them easier to rule. That is the game, and people need to refuse to play it.  No one alive today had anything to do with slavery. No one under the age of seventy eight could have voted for the politicians who supported and protected Jim Crow laws before they were abolished in 1964. There are anti-black (and anti-Asian, anti-white, anti-Semitic, anti-Hispanic, and other) bigots and racists in the country. Most white people are not among them. There should be  no reason for any innocent person to accept a clearly false accusation, feel a need to refute it, or even become uneasy because of it. Instead people should stop caring what present day despicable and dishonest enemies of a liberal society say about them and either ignore it or tell them to go to hell  - or a polite equivalent of course.

Racism, Prejudice, and Discrimination

The term "racism" gets thrown around so carelessly these days that many people may have forgotten that it has a specific meaning. Racism is the doctrine that members of one racial or ethnic group are intrinsically superior or inferior to members of another or others.  Racists are people who hold such opinions. Example include Nazis, Ku Kluxers, and members of some so-called black or white supremacy groups.

Racial prejudice  is the belief in and practice of judging people’s individual character and qualities on the basis of their race or ethnicity.  Examples would include holding  such opinions  as “all black men in big cities are brutal thugs”, “all Mexicans are dirty and lazy”, or “all Germans are still closet Nazis” or holding those opinions with the “all” only implicit.  

Racial discrimination is the act of deciding how and under what conditions  one wants to  associate or not with another person at least partially on the basis of his race.

These three things are different, and it is worthwhile to keep them separate. While one may assume all racists would be prejudiced, not all prejudiced people are racists.   Similarly it is likely that a prejudiced person would want to practice discrimination, but people can discriminate for pragmatic or other reasons different from the broad conclusions of racial prejudice.

Racism is dangerous. There are very good reasons for taking actual racism of any sort seriously and opposing it vigorously. Individual acts of discrimination are usually a person’s private business and  deserve only disapproval if any notice at all.  It helps to know the difference, and to do that one must first understand that there is a difference.   

It is also useful to remember that things such as telling an ethnic joke, using a taboo word, or mentioning a statistical datum such as “a higher percentage of black men than white men commit violent crimes” or “east-Asian Americans have higher average IQ test scores than white Americans” may not be instances of any of the three, depending on context and intent.

Which Meaning?

As the campaign for president goes along, we can expect to hear more accusations of racism directed at people who criticize Obama. It will be useful to consider what different people mean by the terms “racist” and “racism” and which meaning is being used in the campaign.

In its most precise sense racism means the doctrine that the members of some races or ethnic groups are inherently inferior or superior to other people solely on the basis of belonging to the group. A racist is a person who adheres to such doctrines. Example would include Nazis, Ku Kluxers, and members of some black identity or black nationalist groups. The terms are used in this way mainly by people who think about the exact meaning and shades of meaning of the words they use.

In a looser sense people use the term “racism” as a synonym for racial prejudice or bigotry to refer to opinions or actions  disparaging, condemning, judging, or disapproving of  a person only because he belongs to a particular race or ethnic group.  Used in this way the word is less precise and ignores the important distinction between the merely prejudiced and the doctrinaire racist. It  is often so used by people not thinking quite as clearly as they might.

Far less precise is  the use of “racism” as a label for anything that is or might be viewed as insulting or annoying to black people. Here things ranging from criticisms of affirmative action or serious discussions of statistical differences among groups in education, crime rates, or economic attainment all the way to gross ethnic jokes, use of taboo words such as “nigger”, and actual prejudice or discrimination get  rolled together into a vague amalgam.  This usage is common among  both political hacks and people careless in their thinking and receptive to indoctrination.

In a similar way, the word “racism” is sometimes used to mean any public criticism of the actions, ability, or opinions of any black person, irrespective of whether the criticism is based on the person’s race. This is  done mainly by fools and scoundrels.

Then there is the labeling as “racism” of any public criticism of the actions, ability, or opinions of any black person, provided that he is also a  leftist (leaving  the Herman Cains, Clarence Thomases, Thomas Sowells, and so on of the world as fair game).  This is common in politics and the traditional news media and is  done chiefly by scoundrels.

It is a safe bet that many of Obama’s cheerleaders and sycophants will make ample use of this last definition during the campaign.