Race schism

I have struggled to read this year. I blame it on my internet friend, Chenzi. Until mid-last year I was chewing through books fairly rapidly. If I weren't working or running or attending to the demands of living, I was probably reading. It was great to meet Chenzi for the first time last year, but we recommended each other a book and we bought our own copies of the other's book. I don't know whether he liked the book I suggested to him, but his book was hard work. In my view it wasn't well written and was really dense with Buddhist terminology in parts. It was a drag. I went through a period before my business trip where I pushed myself to grind through a few dry patches but when I saw him in April I still wasn't more than 60% of the way through. Reading it meant I wasn't reading other things, and without the drive to read it, I got quite hooked on podcasts and youtube.

What do I watch most? Mainly, American talk shows and cable news usually about the ongoing circus of US politics. It is quite possibly the outrage factor that comes with listening to someone as venal, ignorant, deceitful, base and egotistical as President Trump. He is incredible in his singular collection of negative traits that together have somehow, somehow, led him to be "leader of the free world". Recently he tweeted about four female congresswomen of different ethnic backgrounds and suggested that their home countries were chaotic and they should "go back to their countries" to fix it, rather than criticise America (by which he means himself). The response was swift: "President Trump is a racist." It was especially obvious because three of the four were American-born citizens just like him. One had come as a refugee but she too was a US citizen. All four were legitimately elected members of the House of Representatives.

Anyone who has followed him know that he is almost certainly a racist, but there was a lot of tip-toeing around the term. Firstly, it is taken as ad hominem put-down. People don't like to be called "racist" because it's a negative term. There was push-back because in civilised political debate you shouldn't use put-downs. But like many words seen as put-downs, they do actually refer to something. A racist, in the strongest sense of the word, is someone who believes that some races are superior to others; and in a weaker sense, attributes particular qualities to people because of their race, often despite their actual being. I say he is certainly a racist because he exhibits more criticism towards people of other ethnic groups, shows he believes black people owe white people respect and denigrates nationalities and ethnicities.

Secondly, there was a nuance between someone being a racist and someone saying racist things. Tepid criticism of it avoided saying anything about him; they just spoke about his language or his actions, a la "hate the sin not the sinner". This has some merit to it. I may some things that could be racist, sexist or bigoted without feeling racially superior, a male chauvinist or a bigot. Some of that can be from being inarticulate with a generalisation, speaking too simply when I know there is more nuance. There might also be a legacy effect where I might have latent beliefs or tendencies that distinguish. I might also speak from an observational point of view, rather than an aspirational tone. For example, I might say that the Chinese students in our school sometimes struggle with direction, rather than always trying to take them as individuals with their own different proclivities that could be uplifted by a consistent positive language for how they could be. I also might speak in jest but with the wrong timing, wrong audience or with a context I'm not aware of. His language is clearly racist, and in fact taps into a common offensive line: "Go back to your country!"

Also, thirdly, there was the classic racist defence: "I have black friends." If you have a black friend, you can't be racist can you? The best refutation of this is: "Can a sexist have a wife, daughters and a mother?" In a recent podcast it mentioned psychologically there is a degree of moral licensing at play. Often in history there has been a "pioneer" such as Sammy Davis Junior who might be permitted but often it comes at the detriment of others because they allowed him into their circle so they can continue to be racist freely to all others. Some people have suggested voters who elected Obama may have been licensed to vote Trump. Clearly, having a black friend doesn't mean you respect the dignity of other black people, let alone other races.

And fourthly there is a more elegant defence against being called a racist, that what is being to is not race but some proxy of race, such as religion. Is islamophobia racist if it is directed at fear of a religion or the fear of terrorism caused in the name of Islam? The discussion in America went more into these foreign faces attacking "American values" and wanting to install foreign ideas (evil things such as universal healthcare). Naturally it is preferable to have a superficial war of ideas than the superficial denigration of the person bearing the ideas.

Dissecting any comment of Trump's is a foolish endeavour. He splatters together some words, often without syntax, endlessly. Why waste time on it? Distraction, I guess. Now where is that book...