Friday, April 27, 2012

Very much not impossible at all. PART ONE

If there was ever a term that creates a variety of emotional responses almost every time it's used, racism is it.   Yet often the word is used to describe such a range of concepts in such a range of circumstances it's sometimes difficult to get much real meaning out of it.     

Is the word used for so many things it has lost most of its meaning other than as an emotional wedge?   Is it good for anything other than as a way to provoke a strong emotional response?    To delve into that, we first have to do what so often the context does not do; we have to define it to mean something at least somewhat specific.





By most definitions in order for there to be racism, basically three things must be believed by a given person, who is of course a member of some specific defined group of people.  First,  that of some small number of groups (each made up of a very large number of humans, essentially defined by appearance) each group has certain inherent biological traits associated with it..  Second,  that the traits of  their group are superior to those traits of  at least one other group.    Third, that this belief in the inferiority of the other group justifies discriminating against that group, repeated in some way or another for each other "inferior group."   Combining the three then, there is discrimination warranted by and due to the inferiority that is an inherent part of what a group is.   That the inferiority is due to their physical characteristics in a certain realm or range.


Racism doesn't include in and of itself the discrimination, bigotry, hatred or other matters that lead to, stem from, or go along with racism.   It's simply that at some core level there's a belief in basic racial differences,  with that belief acting as a justification for non-equal treatment.    This is somewhat limited, but it has specificity and meaning .    


In terms of discussion, most matters race (the narrow definition race-ism) is more about ethnicity.  One could even say there are not so much racial groups (inexact and misleading colors such as brown, black, white,  yellow, blue green, pink, chartreuse, paisley) as there are ethnic groups..  An ethnicity is a group of people that share deep and  difficult to impossible to change commonalities.   The group members identify with each other on a common heritage and more.   This includes a combination of such things as a  language, culture, and religion.   There is a shared ideology of ancestry and marriage and belonging within the group both defined by and based upon these commonalities in an intertwined and essentially inextricable way.   The commonality defines who they are over a long period of time as a group as a whole.

The concept of race as being related to but separate from ethnicity  is one of a past (outdated) presumption of a biological grouping apart from cultural matters.    That is, a race in that sense is a large distinct group of semi-pseudo-phenotypes, which at its simplest (and most incomplete and erroneous) is one of skin color.   To go with the Meyers Lexikon circa 1850, that would be three; Mongoloid, Europid, Negroid.   To go with one modern version that isn't much anywhere near the same thing as those three and looking back 40,000 years, that might as well be  Denisovan, Neanderthal and Cro-magnon.   To go with another way, everyone is descended from Australopithecus afarensis, or that there's only one 'race' of  Homo sapiens sapiens.   So biological essentialism is dead.   Collective differentiation of physical and behavioral traits is too complex for such a simple and misleading and meaningless answer.

Those are another large number of topics and other sets of arguments.  To keep it simpler, we'll group race and ethnicity into one, the idea of race as including all of these inheritable sorts of characteristics and the cultural and other commonalities, so as to include geographic ancestry, physical appearance, language, social customs and the like.   This is basically what the term racism does, combine race and ethnicity into one.  Because they are essentially the same thing, endlessly mixed and both physically and logically inseparable.    (As an example, the UN considers there to be no difference between race and ethnicity in considering discrimination.)

Again though, one must be careful or things become so vague, a term or word or phrase can cover anything, or at least just about everything beyond the literal meaning.  Not just racism but things like global warming, gun control,  politics,  homophobia, retardedgay, stupid, and heavy metal.     Once something becomes "used for everything but" there will be problems.  Because when we use them in whatever way we wish to, who can understand what it is we mean when discussing them?.

In this case, race (ethnicity) does not by itself necessarily include any or all of biological sex, gender, sexual preference, economic strata, religion, religious sect, social position, accent, nationality, region or the like.   While members of a certain ethnic group may also be further grouped into what hobbies they have or what sort of car they own of course, such things aren't considered part of their nature or culture or deeply defining characteristics.   Yet if we were to take two people living in the same neighborhood in Norway that were exactly the same ethnically, religiously, career-wise and so on?  If one drank Friele and the other drank Ali, a sign of Barn amme Joh. Johannson! is likely going to have somebody or another calling it foul evil racist racism these days.

Because once humans group together into a pack, into the mob, they will no matter what find something to hate each other about the other groups, whatever the division is, for whatever reason.    One only needs to read a history of immigrants to the United States to see this.   After all, disregarding human nature, it might seem  that recent travelers from Europe would band together over a shared regional or nationality aspect, rather than competing or mistreating or killing each other just because they came from different counties or social status strata.     Yet of course, those people from that other village don't have the correct religion, now do they.   Or they dress funny, or have bad accents or like all the wrong television shows.

Not all of it could be called racism (or correctly called racism) but one thing's for sure.  Just because you share 49 of 50 things in common with another person doesn't mean you don't want to smash their head against a rock.   Especially if that 50th thing is more money or a more handsome boyfriend.or a more famous father.  It even happens if 200 out of 200 things are the same.

Yet so often, when there is a difference in skin color or tribe or neighborhood or religion or economic group?  Even when that difference has nothing to do with any conflict that might have happened, it's taken as the reason.   After all, if that one is from Jinan and that one is from Wuhan, that must be why Bao broke Hua's car windshield.    Racism!

One only needs to take a look at the criminal statistics in a given country to know that ethnicity (et al) doesn't hold all that much power over not being cruel to somebody else.

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