Let’s talk racism and racists.


My experience of the problem.

There are some arguments that I have seen involving racism that I think need addressing. I’ve specifically seen people, usually white people like myself, try to control how racism is used at a social level. While there are several stereotyped examples they seem to center on fear based reactions.

It’s reasonable to be afraid of how racism gets used, it’s supposed to feel bad. But it just has to be accepted that if racism is to be overtly and publically dealt with there are some words that have to be used as openly and commonly as needed: racism, racist, overt/covert, implicit/explicit, conscious/unconscious.

Since I have a personality that tends to the aggressive (a neutral) I commonly also use things like direct/indirect, object/context, dominant/subordinate, aggressive/defensive as well. What racism does makes it a legitimate thing to objectify for social purposes and to do that you have to look for racists.

 

The subject/object.

This is the internet. Our experience of other people is objectified by its very nature. Like it or not we have to accept that we treat people as objects as a result of how the internet is used. I try to be moral and ethical about it because I accept that there is an inherent amount of dehumanization to our experience of other human beings on the internet and actively adapt accordingly. I actively shape my empathy.

I also actively strategize against racists. Empathy actually attaches to that, and you have to accept that parts of empathy are supposed to feel bad.

Racism is a characteristic. Anyone who considers going to a dictionary has to keep in mind that it’s a thing that has to be detected over a period of time. Anyone thinking about pointing at a dictionary better be able to use it in contexts involving current real-world use. Words only represent things and they are not the things. If you want to limit the usage of the words you have to know about the things they actually attach to.

That gets us to reputation. This is the experience of racism over time. I’ve seen rumblings about avoiding the word racist. Fuck that, a racist is a person with a demonstrated pattern of behavior over time. How can it be anything else? That is our target on the internet.

 

Racists as a collection of symbols attached to an object-person and progressing through time.

This gets us to bias. Racism is a form of bias based on race. Don’t worry my fellow melanin-challenged apes, racism comes in many forms when attached to racists. You get to defend yourself. But if you don’t take the opportunity to understand the shapes you will have no idea what racism looks like. Then you become one of the people I see on the internet that act like they were insulted but have no idea what the insult is shaped like.

*overt/covert

*implicit/explicit

*conscious/unconscious

This is important shit and I can even describe how my overt anti-racist aggression searches for implicit/explicit objects when it comes to objects that constitute racism on the internet. I define my targets like any socially responsible person with socially aggressive instincts should, so I take the conscious/unconscious range into account as much as I can (I still want to change society).

This is how your personality is shaped and operates over time. Those are neutral things and to know them is to learn how to control yourself on a level that gives you skills. If you stay ignorant it will always be painful for you because of all of the parts of the biases that generate racism. That fucks with your ability to detect real social threats. I see you, you fellow white people who had actual characteristics applied to you. Not just insult. What racism is suggests much deeper ways that your reasoning and logic processes are legitimately damaged. You want this.

 

Bias is a neutral.

Bias mucks with a bunch of things that are observable in culture, that means objective in a functional sense. Like bias that takes place in comment boxes on the internet. Bias on the issue of race as a part of reputation is a contextual element indispensable to any discussion. And indispensable to actually change society. And bias is representative of how our moral and ethical minds work. Good and proper reasoning and logic is biased by nature. You want to be in control of yourself.

So how you do you apply bias to yourself when ruminating about your life? You accept that bias comes in good and bad forms and that it represents how our reasoning processes work. You actually spend time thinking about why you make the decisions that you do and you make sure that they have connections to the people you interact with.

That is legitimately scary shit. But it does get easier over time. You see the value in accepting the experiences of others on a provisional basis and in many forms, that only includes criticism. “Provisional basis” is not wiggling or waffling. You get to choose how you feel and believe about what other people tell you. I’m saying that there is value in being able to recognize other people saying that you understood what they said, and to actively work to carry that knowledge into the future. It’s how you look for flaws, mental preening.

It’s honestly why I enjoy questioning rude people so much. I like understanding the experiences of others. I enjoy watching everyone discuss how they experience the world in feeling as well as content, my experience of the world includes an excess of feeling. I like thinking about social morals in both general and situational forms. But I also accept that if I want to change society I have to make decisions about how I interact with others, including how I shape my social criticism. Or how I react to and use criticism when among people I want to help. Bias is not always bad and you should be ready to think about how yours work. For your own skills and ability if other human beings are not good enough.

But either way you better accept that fixing racism and it’s cousins sexsim, mysogyny, the phobias associated with LGBT+ people, ablism and more will require public criticism of racists in general and specific language. I want that gone, in myself and in others.

Comments

  1. brucegee1962 says

    I’m one of the people who’s saying we need to cool it with the accusations of racism. As such, I disagree with most of what you say above. Here’s why.
    Historically, the Democrats have been made up of a loose coalition of minorities, overeducated coastal types, and Midwestern blue-collar workers. What last month’s catastrophe proved conclusively is that, if you subtract the blue-collar workers, what’s left of the coalition is NOT enough to win national elections.
    The most depressing thing about election night was seeing the maps that showed county after county that voted for Obama in the last two elections, then voted for Trump this time around. Now, can you be a white voter who voted for Obama, yet still be a racist? Sure. But the fact is, those people undoubtedly think that voting for him kind of inoculated them from charges of racism. They’re also going to react, really viscerally, to charges of racism. As you say, a lot of their racism is probably unconscious. Even if their Trump votes were partially motivated by sexism or racism, their conscious minds have provided them with what they believe to be good reasons for voting for the cheeto.
    Four years from now, we’re going to need to go back to these people and say “Come back to the Democratic party, white blue collar workers.” But if the message they’ve been getting from hardcore Democrats in the meantime is all about how they’re a bunch of racists, their reaction isn’t going to be “Gee, you know, maybe I do have some subconscious racism that I need to work on.” They’re just going to say “screw you, Democrats, I’m never going to vote for you guys again.” And we will lose in 2020, and 2024, and by that time our country and our planet may well be screwed beyond repair.

  2. says

    What does “cool it with accusations of racism” look like? I need to know if I should give a fuck about the specific things you want cooled sans metaphor. I talked about other social variables that I take into account and I’m not going to cooperate with people that have certain arguments on an implicit basis.

    Why should I be concerned about your problems with democrats and elections? I am not a person associated with blue Ds and donkeys by party interaction, I just tend to like them better on social issues 90% of the time. The rest of the time I am selective in my criticism because like every other homo sapiens I want to change society in some way.

    What part of my blog post made you believe that I did not care about the intense feelings of accusations of racism? I said things about feelings and accusations up there. An accusation of racism is a specific thing and I need to look for the irrational biases in reasoning and logic that constitute the ways that racism is expressed. I’m content being an individual working on needling racist expressions when I see them.

    I’m personally comfortable as an individual when it comes to many of the predictions about a Trump win. I am white, male, aggressive by personality in a society that likes to saturate aggression, enjoy making social statements consistent with my personal morals and ethics and other things that apply social advantages. I mostly feel bad for people that Trump voters have bigotries against because they will bear the brunt of it, so I unapologetically take advantage of the psychological reality of being an aggressive white male raised in an aggressive conservative and religious military family. I basically shame the fuck out many at the implicit and indirect level of society and when they respond I tell them why it’s not personal for me while being personal for them. It’s part of how things work in terms of social evolution. I’m always willing to provide my reasons, data, opinions, impressions or whatever the other person seems to want outside of specific things in my ethics related to changing society in the long term.

    I do not need Trump voters, and the people I care about fear them for reasons I accept. I believe that Trump voters are more damaging to society than a Trump presidency. I don’t care about the president as much as I do the individual interactions that led to the decision to vote for him. I play things “long game” and “short game” when it comes when it comes to how I try to change society.

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