For Freud’s Sake: Anti-racists are the real racists…again?

A couple weeks ago an NPR bigwig wrote an editorial about how it was wrong to call racism “racism” or racists “racists” because that was a moral judgement, not a factual one.

That. Position. Is. Freuding. Bankrupt.

Treating racism as a matter of moral opinion leads us directly to this place:

[Text Excerpt, emphasis mine:] “If racist Elijah Cummings would focus more of his energy on helping the good people of his district … perhaps progress could be made”

Ten days ago, Wonkette’s Dok Zoom did a story on how NPR’s  Keith Woods, VP for newsroom training and diversity, argued against the decision NPR’s newsroom had previously made to label racist shit as actually racist. The conclusion that Dok Zoom came to was this:

that’s a big part of the problem with Woods’s argument: When it’s reduced to a headline, it sure as hell sounds like “let’s not stir up controversy with the mean word racism.”

But I don’t think that’s even the biggest problem with Woods’s argument. No, I think the biggest problem is that when whether or not something is racist or someone is engaging in racism is a moral opinion rather than a factual question, then there is no possible basis on which the media (or anyone, really) can challenge the message “anti-racists are the real racists”. It is the effect of long-standing refusals of news departments to treat racism as a fact that has gotten us to the point where even in 2019 Trump thinks that accusing Elijah Cummings of racism is a good media strategy … and might even be right.

Since we’ve been hearing this asinine argument for more than 50 years now, it seems imperative that the US media pulls its head out of its collective burro and gets busy developing the skills necessary to actually investigate racism as a factual matter, something that either does or does not exist, not a matter of opinion.

 

Oh, and by the way: Tucker Carlson, when Jon Stewart said you were hurting the US? This is what he was talking about.

 

 

 

 

More on “People Who Call Out Racism Are the Real Oppressors”

I excerpted a quote from an old comment of mine when writing my most recent post on horizontal hostility. There was more there worth examining, but it wasn’t quite=exactly-directly germane as the original concept being discussed was horizontal hostility within LGBTQIA communities. (A topic suggested by Mano Singham.) I ultimately chose not to include it, but I could not ignore it, as it not only deals with feminists’ failings on anti-racism work (a topic I’ve covered before and will continue to cover) but this quote directly hits on a topic mentioned twice in the last couple of days, the idea that people calling our racism are the real racists.

It also shows how when [certain] existentialist feminists are called on, say, racism, they can so vehemently denounce an attempt to end racist behavior as siding with the oppressive powers that be. Paying attention to racism within women’s communities is “dividing us” when we are [supposed to be] all one, glorious, unified, colorless “us” of women. Did I mention colorless? Hmmmm, what’s a synonym for colorless???

Obviously this isn’t quite, “People who call out racism are the real racists,” but it would work if you substitute “oppressors” in for “racists”.