Paula Deen

We’ve all had a lesson in tolerance this last week, I wonder how many learned from it.

Apparently, there are two crimes which have no statute of limitations. Murder, and using a word which is later determined to be offensive. Consider that for a moment. A word, which in context is descriptive, is later decided to be a racial slur. You never use the word again, but because you used the word when it was popular, your career is destroyed.

Words change over time, sometimes people do too. You have a relative who still calls the refrigerator “the ice box”, you probably say “tin foil rather than “aluminum foil”, you’ve heard the phrase “crank the car” even though cranks disappeared in the 1930s. Some words have changed in meaning and acceptance. “Pansy” isn’t a very strong insult, but in the UK the word “Wanker” is the fourth most offensive word in the language (I think “Dentist” is in the top three). The acceptable term for a dark skinned person of African heritage living in America has gone through negro, black, colored, African American (which is really funny when a black person isn’t from Africa or America)  and I really couldn’t tell you what the “correct” term is today. I kind of like first names, I don’t think anyone refers to me as “that white guy”.

There are a multitude of facets to this story, my biggest question is “Which “n” word?”. When a word becomes so vile that we can no longer stand to even say it, how do we know which words are “bad”?  My grandmother, for instance, called black people “nigras”. This was a degradation of the word “negroes”, which is a descriptive word, not an insult. It was the polite word to use back in her day. Considering that, was my grandmother a racist? I wouldn’t think so, one of the first songs she taught me was “Jesus loves the little children”, You know it, “Jesus loves the little children, all the children of he world, Red and Yellow Black and White they are precious in his sight, Jesus loves the little children of the world.” Doesn’t sound like a racist to me.

Is it the word, or the intent? When I take the bus through South Philly, and I can’t hear myself think for all the “Nigger”, “Bitch”, “Motherfucker”, going back and forth at high volume, it’s obvious the word itself has no sting. So was Ms. Deen using the word in an aggressive manner? According to one story, she was talking about a wedding, and how sharp a black man in a white tie looks as a server. Somehow, whichever “n” word she used, I just can’t see anyone saying how classy it would look to “have a bunch of niggers serving the guests”.  It seems far more likely that she used a descriptive word like negro or nigra. But then, she may have used another “n” word, perhaps “nightingale”. Who knows, or more precisely, who cares?

From what I can see, a bunch of uptight white folks care. In this age of Obama, where anyone can be a racist for any reason, I’m not hearing much from the black community about this. You see, the person bringing the complaint about racial slurs was white. The only black people I have heard talking about it were supporting Ms. Deen. The core of the issue is “white guilt”. We tend to act as if the United States, and only in the Southern United States, is the only place where slavery has ever been practiced. Perhaps we should ask the folks in Niger and Sudan, where slavery is practiced today, what they think about that. Perhaps we should consider the word “slavery”, and see how it compares to conditions throughout Asia.

Prejudice is not an American issue, or a Black/White issue. It happens everywhere people of different races or beliefs live near each other. Currently two factions of the Muslim religion are doing everything they can to remove each other from the planet, with slightly more vigor than they are trying to remove non Muslims from the planet. Different tribes throughout Africa are following suit. South America is doing little better. The various nationalities in Asia enslave and torture each other routinely. And yet, racism is an American problem. The pope was able to say pedophilia was an American problem for the same reason, we’re the only ones talking about it. Ms. Deen’s crime was being honest. 

I’ve always believed that talking about an issue was the path to resolution, I think Paula Deen may disagree today.

 

 

 

 

Racism

Warning. This post contains words that some may find offensive.

The word “racist” gets used a lot. More than it used to be. I use it to display when actual racism is taking place, hoping that someone might notice what the word actually means. The job gets more difficult as language becomes meaningless.

Merriam Webster defines racism as “a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race”. That’s the way I interpret the word. A racist would be someone who has that belief.

Recently, and by that I mean over the last decade or so, a new definition has come to light. Check out this definition from the “Urban Dictionary”: “If you’re a white man, this is what you are. It doesn’t even matter if your wife is black and you have an adopted child from India, or how many black friends you have, somehow you’re going to end up being a racist according to how the media portrays the white man as “racist whities”. All of this is funny because the white man is the one that is stereotyped as being racist, which is hypocrisy at its best. It’s racist to assume that white men are racists( emphasis mine). If you don’t get offended by racial insults, then you’re apparently racist too, but an actual racist would get offended by it. When you hear a certain word too much (I’m sure we’ve all heard “cracka” hundreds of times thanks to standup comedy) then you become desensitized to it.” This appears to be the new standard.

In the early 90s Spike Lee said “Black people can’t be racist, only white people are racists”. That has slowly turned into “White people are only racists” as in “All white people are racists”. As suggested by both the Merriam Webster and Urban Dictionary definitions, such a statement would in itself be racist.

The new definition of racism is that it requires prejudice and power, so “racism” is institutional. By that definition, individuals couldn’t be racists, but never mind, this wasn’t ever going to make sense. Just because I’m white doesn’t mean I have any power. To assume such would be racist.

The real truth is that like any other insult, the actual word is meaningless. Which is sad, because real racism does exist, and there’s no way to identify it.

Think about profanities. Wouldn’t any father be a “Motherfucker“? Unless you take the time to think that the phrase initially referred to Oedipus. Other curses have developed into similar non-insulting meanings.

I was recently taken to task by a person who felt insulted by my use of the word “racist” in the blog titled “vegetarians”. She felt that I had misapplied the meaning. I thought that being Korean was a race, and that attacking Koreans for their cultural practices was racism. I was surprised, because I was under the impression that the word is so often misused and overused that no one took it as an insult anymore. You can read the conversation on that thread. She was certain that no animal rights person could be a racist. That’s the kind of blanket statement that could be interpreted as racist in some applications.

One of what I would call the benefits of the Obama administration is the dilution of the word “racist”. After calling everyone who didn’t vote for Obama a racist, and then calling all Republicans racists, they had called enough people racists that were most definitely not racists, the word meant next to nothing. That is not necessary a good thing, it would be nice for words to have meanings so we could communicate, but losing an insult might be a step in the right direction. Most recently the democratic chairwoman in Louisiana, a woman who most probably has actually encountered racism in her lifetime, made the following statement.

So racism is about disagreeing with one policy of one man. That seems to be about as far from racism as you could get, if the word wasn’t just a reworking of “Cracker”. It’s just an insult, a sound without meaning other than “I don’t like you”. The card has been played so many times that it is the only thing transparent in this administration.

We’ve done the same thing with other words, “Retarded” used to mean “Slowed”, so that “Mentally Retarded” was a clinical term. Calling someone retarded as an insult became so common that people who were actually retarded became insulted. Sorry, but that’s genuinely funny. The term will be changed in the ICD-11, and has been changed in official usage, but in ten or twenty years that word will be used as an insult as well. “Homophobe”, a term I’ve never felt portrayed its meaning properly, has become so politicized and overused that it has lost meaning, which was “anti-homosexual” and not actually “afraid of homosexuals”. We’re getting there with “terrorist”.

I prefer that words carry meanings, otherwise communication becomes more and more difficult, but insults fall into a category of undefined exclamations, like “ouch”. They should be regarded as having just as much meaning.

You’ll know if I intended to insult you. I use the word “Wanker“, because I like the way it sounds. And because it really annoys one particular wanker.

 

 

 

 

Aliens

My wife was not born in America. She had lived here for five years before I met her, and we are working our way through the system of obtaining a green card. The experience has been frustrating for her, and enlightening for me. I had never found the word “Alien” to be derogatory, but to her, it is. She remembers using the word for “foreigner” or “immigrant”, even when she lived in English speaking countries.  Aliens come from outer space and are usually green.

Although she has visited more countries than I, it is very possible that my travels have covered more miles. When most Americans are asked where they are from, they will respond with a city or state. I usually say “America”. My lack of a strong identity of origin has fed my nationalistic pride. With that, I have always found the need to hyphenate nationality as, well, silly. My previous wife’s first words to me were “You need to know two things about me. I’m Sicilian, and I smoke”. She had never left America, her parents had both been born in America, but she felt she was Sicilian, not even Sicilian-American. We have a friend from Rhodesia, her parents were from Scotland and she has white skin and red hair, no one would ever call her an African-American.

A couple of conversations converged to bring today’s topic to the page. One was the flak over Mattel’s dolls of the world collection. Not the entire collection, just “Mexico Barbie”. Apparently some people take an impossibly proportioned fantasy totem seriously as an international ambassador. From what I have been able to find out, the people who have found the doll insulting to their heritage have no idea of what their heritage consists of. They are “Mexican-Americans” who have never been to Mexico. They wish to identify with a culture which they know nothing about. People who actually live in Mexico find the doll to be quite appropriate.

Another conversation was with a black friend. He mentioned that the Gadsden Flag was being banned in New Rochelle, because it was “offensive” and a “symbol of the TEA party”. The flag, familiar to all Americans as a symbol of the revolutionary war, has been adopted by the TEA party, but has also been used by the U.S. Navy and the Marine Corps since 1775. It brought to my mind the issues in America about the “Stars and Bars” or Confederate flag. To many, the flag represents rebellion, and/or pride in Southern heritage. But other groups find it symbolic of the civil war, which they feel is symbolic of slavery, which of course is symbolic of racism, so people who display the Stars and Bars are racists, even if they happen to be black. This took us into a deeper conversation about racial terms, and he pointed out that no one from Egypt would want to be called an African American. It should also be noted that as a black person, memories of Africa would include being captured by other Africans and sold to slave traders. Maybe there’s a reason that although they tend to venerate the continent, very few recall which country was their origin. This brought to mind comments by Dr. Bill Cosby, who started his career reminiscing about growing up in Philadelphia but is now not well loved in the black community due to his portrayal of the “unattainable” status of the Huxtable family.

I knew a woman in the Air Force, who suddenly became Irish in March. She was from Savannah GA, where St. Patrick’s day brings out the Irish in everyone. A little research reveals there are nine times as many people of Irish heritage in the United States as in all of Ireland. There  are more people of Polish descent in Detroit than in Warsaw. America is a land of immigrants, I grew up with the term “melting pot”, because we were supposed to see ourselves as Americans, different cultures all contributing to the American culture. then the hyphenating began, and we became a nation of differences. A nation of Aliens. Alien nation begets Alienation. How easy it is to make people distrust a country that they do not feel they belong to?

Recently a meteorite was found that may have originated on Mercury, others have been identified as being of Martian origin. Some meteorites have contained evidence of life. Perhaps life on Earth originated from, or at least was catalyzed by, alien sources. In that case, would we all be aliens? It would fit the current opinions that we don’t belong here, that we are damaging the planet. I’m wondering what extradition treaties will come into play.

I’m considering moving someplace smaller. Belgium. Fewer occupants than Manhattan. Three languages (I speak one fluently, one I studied long ago and can survive around, the third I’m learning now). Wonderful beers, high carbohydrate diets (frites, waffles, cheeses, and chocolates), and an immigration policy much less complex than America. Probably shortly after we get my wife’s “permanent” green card. Then I will have another perspective on aliens.