I am a racist, too

Amy Schumer has stepped in it again — she did a parody video of Beyoncé’s Formation that wasn’t very funny, wasn’t at all enlightening, and most eye-rollingly of all, once again let a white woman pretend to be synonymous with being black. There was an awkward event in which Jessi Klein, Schumer’s producer, tried to defend her against the charge that she was racist. It did not go well, as described in this article by Nikki Gloudeman.

Because here’s the thing: Yes, Amy Schumer is racist. Amy. Schumer. is. racist. She’s racist because we live in a society founded on racism that has afforded her racial privilege, and she’s racist because she’s said some racist shit. Last night, Jessi made it clear that she’s racist, too.

And yes, I am white, and yes, I am racist too—because we live in a society founded on racism that affords me racial privilege, and because I haven’t always fully acknowledged how I move through this world differently because of the color of my skin, and I’ve done some racist shit. I’ve thought “that cop was nice!” when I got off without a ticket, instead of “How would that have been different if I wasn’t white?” I’ve viewed black men and white men walking behind me at night differently. I’m trying to be more aware every day, but I fuck up. I’m still racist.

So if racism can happen in contexts outside white-hooded vigilantism, and if it indeed perpetuates our entire society, what now then? It’s not quite as simple as saying “Yep, I guess I’m racist like everyone else!” For one thing, that ignores the nuances and degrees of racism. For another, that’s not really going to affect anything.

The most important step is owning that shit.

Yep. I’m racist, too, and I’m also sexist, because I take advantage of all of the immense privilege of being a white man in a racist, sexist culture. You take every advantage you are given, as well. It shouldn’t be so hard to acknowledge that fact, but I do know what is really difficult, and that is…changing it.

I also don’t often know how to “own it”. When a traffic cop doesn’t give me a ticket, in part because I’m white, it wouldn’t help to demand that I be punished; that I don’t get pulled over as often because I’m driving while white isn’t going to be corrected by pulling up to random patrol cars and insisting that I really should have my plates run and hey, officer, maybe you should check my trunk or frisk me? The goal of us privileged people shouldn’t be to share the injustices given to others, but to make sure we all get the same justice.

I think the first step is simply to listen to those who have been oppressed and honor their requests for respect. Schumer and Klein don’t seem to be able to do that.

Oy, can I turn around and go back to China?

In a stunning fit of bad taste and bad design, the Newark immigration & customs control has a terrible feature. Everyone landing at that airport gets filtered through a customs screening room, a large space with long, slow moving lines, and mounted dead center is a large television. It is tuned to CNN. My welcome back to the USA was Wolf Blitzer (spit) yammering about two things: emails, and polls. Good god, America, you are being poisoned by the media. Rather than policy, we hear only about trivia and the state of the horse race. Charles Pierce summarizes my feelings.

I am perilously close to perishing for the desire of wanting somebody to win the presidency on the merits. I am tired of polls and micro-analytics based on splitting the electorate into bite-sized pieces. And I am tired of pundits who don’t know dick about the people for whom they claim to be speaking. (Hi, Joe! Mika! Good ta see ya!) And I am tired of surrogates, all of them, and not just the crazy ones that speak for El Caudillo del Mar-A-Lago, but all the people dealing in arguments and talking points and bullshit that passed their sell-by dates sometime around last Memorial Day.

One more week of this bullshit, but I do not expect to see an improvement after the election, since our media seem to be totally incapable of considering ideas and actions outside of their effect on Nate Silver’s numbers games.

So I got home some time after 2am, collapsed into bed slept a few hours, and got up to teach my classes. The first thing that greeted me when I opened my office door, unfortunately, was that I’d set the due date for lab reports for the end of last week, and you can guess what I found: piles and piles of papers slid under my door. That wasn’t so bad, though; I expected it, and it was the first major writing assignment of the term, so I’m kind of looking forward to reading them. What I didn’t expect, and that soured my stomach, was that the latest issue of the Morris North Star, our far-right student newspaper, was also stuffed under there. This is what I got to see:

img_0391

Gag. Thud. Barf. I am so disappointed in some of our students for their lack of empathy, total absence of wit, and outright stupidity. I also heard that someone spoke up at a conservative forum on campus, expressing their fear of being seen as conservative at UMM, and they used as an example their certainty that they could never attend a class taught by yours truly, PZ Myers, while wearing a college republicans T-shirt. Little do they realize that at a small college like ours, where our teabagging students aren’t shy about expressing themselves on their horrible little rag, I already know…and it makes no difference in my biology classes.

Now if I were grading them on their sense of humor or their consciousness of their fellow students, they’d be failing, but I haven’t figured out a way to include those topics on exams about cell biology or genetics. Or if I could test them on hypocrisy — you know they’re not very aware when they can complain that they can’t wear a conservative slogan on a t-shirt (they can) because of ‘political correctness’, but at the same time than can run cartoons that ignorantly denigrate other students because ‘politically incorrect’ is a mark of pride to them.

It’s also the case that I can’t fail students for being assholes, unfortunately.

OK, one bit of good news. This was waiting for me in my mailbox.

img_0392

Now all I have to do is catch up on my sleep, get over my jetlag, and have this annoying throbbing headache end, and maybe I can read it.

Trick or treat

I’m completely missing Halloween this year, but if I had gotten back in time, I’d have been tempted to print out copies of this little fake Chick tract to hand out to the Christian kiddies, instead of candy.

Nah, I’m lying. I’d never do that — I always despised those sanctimonious people who handed out tracts instead of candy. But since I can’t pump candy over a satellite link to all of your computers, I’ll have to settle for bits instead.

Happy Halloween!

I’m on my way back! I’ve been completely out of touch for the last few days — it turns out that China has completely blocked Google, Twitter, YouTube, and…FreethoughtBlogs (I think that last one is an accident of our google adserver code), so I’ve had no access to email or FtB since Thursday. You don’t have to wag a finger at me, since my daughter has “tsk, tsk”ed me already for failing to set up a VPN before I left.

But aside from that one little deficiency, I have had a wonderful time in China. I was blown away by Chinese hospitality, and got so much good food, and got to tour the Forbidden Palace, the Great Wall, and the Summer Palace — it was a terrific experience, and I want to do it again.

img_1558-1

At least you had a couple of slymepitters around for a little low quality entertainment — one of them made 107 comments all by his little self. It’s kind of sad and pathetic.

I’ve done a little cleanup, now that I’ve left Chinese airspace, but you’ll have to wait a bit for more substantive posts. I expect I’ll arrive home in Morris around 2am, and I have to get up bright and early to teach a 9am course.

Totally open thread

I’m at the airport, about to clamber onto a plane that will drop me off on the other side of the planet, and I’m not sure when I will emerge again in a conscious and coherent state, so I leave this thread to you all. I also know that the cowardly trolls always take advantage of my absences to crap on the site, so just be aware: I will prune threads ruthlessly as soon as I get a moment and am back on the Internet. Rather than engaging with the idiots, just leave a note that comment #X must die. Keyword: rochambeau.

See you on the other hemisphere!

Things you ought not to read while trapped in an interminable faculty meeting

I’ve just gotten out of a 2½ hour faculty meeting. During one of the breaks, I read this page on McSweeney’s, and when I got to #5 and #6, I almost lost it. Then #8, and I felt a funny noise trying to rise up the back of my throat. I seized up at #9, beginning to wonder if they had a spy camera on the wall behind me.

But then I read this article and realized they must have the spy cams installed at the University of Chicago, not here. Whew. We’re only sorta exactly like that.

Jack Chick is dead

deadjack

There will be no rejoicing at his death, because his poison and lies and ignorance live on. I just really can’t care much — it doesn’t help that I just got home after a 13 hour day — and I think he’s just been a malignant goofball with a team of believers doing the work for him, and the absence of one foolish man won’t make a lick of difference.

He has ceased to exist and won’t even know that he’s not going to meet a faceless glowing giant on a throne, or a horned Jewish caricature with a pitchfork. He’s just dead meat.