The Thing About Racism and Prejudice…

I’m sympathetic to your argument. I think the simple answer to why so many people aren’t worried about the things that you are worried about, is that they face a more immediate threat. Economics has always been a killer and so it stays at the top of most peoples lists. Plenty of people are worried about the climate and environment, but not as much as they are about next months bills. Both of our recent mass shooters listed the environment as something they were majorly concerned about though they had very different interests otherwise.

The Environment and Global Warming are a middle class issue. We have a declining middle class, and only the top 10 to 1% have much hope for the future. Don’t be surprised if Environmental issues take a back seat until our economic (survival) issues are addressed.

For all the hype Racism isn’t really an issue. It might be flooding our media at any given time but from a rational mathematical perspective, it’s not a significant concern. The vast majority of people feel the same way you do in respect to race. It does work pretty well as a distraction though and keeps people from working on economic issues so it’s pushed hard by elite interests. The KKK, though you wouldn’t know it from the coverage, is only responsible for about 20 deaths from the couple of decades from their height. Drug dealers rack up more than that in the average weekend. The Charlottesville protest that drew supposed thousands in right wing groups from all over the country (and Canada) was in an area of 110 million people. There is probably more black on white crime than white on black.

Racism is not the reason we aren’t addressing Climate issues. It is because Racism isn’t a economic issue and we can raise a stink about non-economic issues as much as we like and we are encouraged by our betters and media to. If you want movement on the Climate or Environment you have to take care of people economically first. It’s about not putting the cart before the horse.

@ ponderer,

I think you are right that most people care about economic issues the most. Every poll I have seen seems to indicate that economic issues are usually the top priorities of most people with the environment located near the bottom. Among people who are deep into politics, like the people who write and comment on blogs, climate change is likely a more important issue but we are certainly in the minority.

You are also correct that the problem of racism is probably overstated by politicians and media figures. Where I think racism, or perhaps more accurately, identity and tribalism, are important has to do with how they drive how people perceive the world and politics. People might list economic issues as their major concerns yet vote in ways that are not consistent with their economic interests. The working-class Republican who votes for the GOP because it aligns with his identity as a white Christian is a good example, and to be fair you can say the same for poor minorities who might vote for neoliberal Democrats over a left-populist like Bernie Sanders. Look at Obama’s popularity among African-Americans despite the mountain of evidence that he did little to help them and that some of his policies, like the continued militarization of the police, even hurt them.

I used to think that taking care of economic issues would solve many of our issues and allow us to tackle things like climate change but now I am convinced that I greatly overestimated the extent to which people were “rational” bread and butter voters. I put quotes around the world “rational” because there is a sense that being poorly informed or voting based on identity is rational. Most people will never put a lot of thought into politics. They neither have the time nor the inclination and in any event their vote or participation in the system is not likely to change matters much. Voting based on identity works as a useful mental shortcut for most people even if it sometimes hurts them.

I think we have to accept that if we are going to tackle many of the big existential issues like climate change the effort will likely have to come from above, from elites, or we will have to wait for a major catastrophe to help shock people into action. Right now most people don’t care and would probably become angry if any politician threatened their consumer lifestyle in any serious way, which is why I am skeptical that anything serious will be done about the environment in the near future.

And here we are, with three existential threats (nukes/climate change/environmental collapse) and we’re spending all our team screaming at each; running around in fear of each other, when if we don’t act properly, we may drive ourselves to extinction, or at least kill a few billion of us.

Well said. My thoughts exactly. The ship is sinking, and instead of manning the pumps or doing anything to productive to stop or reverse it the passengers are fighting each other to see who can get dibs on the highest spots on the masts.

Quite so Ian. Topical. Do you sport red hair?

Bare-footed, barely literate rubes sprawled across a “couch” the backseat out of a nineteen sixty-nine Chevy Suburban drunk and drooling Pavlovianly on the Ambien, Prozac, Viagra and bimbo, bottle blond, bobble-headed crotch-shots on the multi-millionaire mainstream media Kool-Aid.

It is an induced dyslexia, a learned behavior, a conditioned response. Programming, brain-washing, training monkeys.

As with all other evil, Religion is at the root of it.

Personally, I never understood racial antipathy, or really any form of antipathy based solely on what you look like, what you believe, or what your sexual orientation is. None of that ever made sense to me, partly because I was socialized as a child in areas of mixed race and extraordinarily differing experience. Despite the differences, everyone was the same under the skin, and everybody needed one another in the end.

This was a long time ago in racially segregated California. But despite the nearly universal racial segregation and widespread racial and other prejudice of time, there were pockets of dissent, where people of very different ethnicity and background lived and worked together in relative harmony — not perfect but functional — and to be truthful, they were almost all working class and poor. The Overlords were all, each and every one, white as could be, mostly WASPs of lore and legend, and unshakable in their authority and power, which I would eventually come to realize was based on wealth gained largely through theft and gangsterism. Even if they were pleasant, they were not nice people. They were nasty, brutal, and cruel, and they would rob you blind without a second thought.

Nevertheless, I had no racial prejudice against them. I still don’t despise them because they are (now almost all) white. It doesn’t occur to me to do so. The issue for me is that they mindlessly exploit people and nature for their own pleasure and profit, and in the process do immense harm, typically unthinkingly, almost automatically, and not doing so simply doesn’t occur to them.

In other words, my antipathy toward them is based on what they do. Not all of them are so foul, of course, but most are, at least in my experience, and the handful of exceptions don’t make up for the rest.

Yet when I probe racist prejudice, behold, the justification and rationalization is almost identical. “It’s not skin color, it’s that that they are lazy-good-for-nothings, criminals, ‘animals.'”

Hm. Maybe these attitudes are hard-wired, but which group they apply to is flexible.

Ponder it.

In the current state of American political discourse, “anti-racism” and anti-sexism have become weapons against those trying to organize a politics around issues of economics and economic class, from the bottom. This inversion is supremely ironic, given the history of wealthy classes organizing politics to their advantage by promoting racism. If you are wondering about the sheer volume of Media attention to racism, when some other issues would seem more urgent or important, I think this dynamic ought to be acknowledged.

At a time, when outrage is fully justified by issues of ecological collapse and economic inequality, our collective capacity for outrage is being kept in a worn-out state by a political culture of constant outrage synthesized on television or in social media, but directed mostly at nonsense targets.

To create the liberal consensus against racism and sexism as organizing principles of political society, which they were in the U.S. into the 1950s to an extent and depth seldom acknowledged in historical memory, was the slow work of political agitation stretching back more than a century and a half, at least, in Anglo-American polities. The sexual and civil rights revolutions that culminated in the 1960s and 1970s left a legacy that is being exploited in various ways, including virtue-signalling by those nostalgic for someone else’s heroism.

The uptick in the sheer frequency with which “racism” and similar issues are discussed in a political Media dedicated to holding back economic change (or collapse) suggests to me that we might be wearing out this set of hot buttons.

Humans probably succeeded because within successful tribes, altruists balanced out (could work with) their belligerent brethren, and vice versa, for adaptive solutions to tribal problems. Tribes could be more flexible in adapting to whatever environmental conditions that way. I base this on temperamental genetics, as tested today, which seem more diverse than any other species. This is currently far from an exact settled science but seems plausible to me. Our learned culture and politics sits on top of that foundation, hence all the variations.

But then there’s personal experience. Or more to the point, emotions derived from personal experience. There’s a liberal blog where hating illegals is racism. I’ve never presented the point of view of the powerless native worker who’s been displaced by illegals. But I suspect I’d be declared a racist, officially tagged “the other”. The blog owner/writers are attorneys and academics. I’m not aware that their livelihoods are under any pressure from incoming illegal attorneys and academics. You’d think that being well-educated they’d be aware of that and do a little more nuanced thinking, but they don’t.

I’m sure they’re aware of all the tent cities and unofficial RV parks becoming increasingly prevalent in west coast cities, a recent phenomenon which none of us ever grew up with, but do they ever wonder why those people cant just stay off the drugs and go do all “the dirty jobs” which the hardworking illegals gladly do? Or why these camps haven’t self-segregated along racial lines? I’d try to explain that it’s easier to climb up than it is to fall down, but they may not be able to relate. I don’t think any of those writers has ever fallen down.

A long read, but worthy: Clearly, impeachment is not going to save us. God knows what will come of other hearings. Trump is not going to be shamed or embarrassed into dropping out. Maybe this Jeffrey Epstein stuff will sink Trump or maybe not. We can’t rely on others or fate or anyone other than ourselves to save us. While I would love an old-fashioned storm-the-barricades, tear-down-the-wall, drag the tyrant to the gaol, that’s fantasy. In the real world, our options are fairly limited. The ballot box is one of them. No matter where you stand as a Democrat, and indie, or on the left, getting people to the polls is an effective way to work together. It isn’t sexy or radical, but it is what we have. We’d be a fool not to use it.

Again, be concerned about Trump and his fans’ racism and hate. It is bad, really bad, but this is nothing new for Trump or America. We heard these words justify slavery and Native American genocide. They were chanted in support of the Chinese Exclusion Act and in support of Jim Crow. They were used to hold women down and to terrorize gays and lesbians. When the Civil Rights Movement sang, racists countered with Mass Resistance. Fundamentalist Christians fill their hymnal full of these vile verses. These new words for the same old song, sung by the same people over and over again. We’ve fought them before, now, and will have to fight them in the future.

And fight is what we have to do: Focus and fight smart, fight effectively. Quit worrying about what they might do and concentrate on what we are doing (and if you aren’t doing anything, perhaps it is time for you to get active). We know what they are and what they are capable of: Worrying about them does not help us. Tallying every shitty thing they say and do is a burden. We know what we are up against. The threat has not changed. Accept that as part of life, just as you would mosquitos and cancer. Now fight the threat. Let’s send Trump back to where he came from and make the hater-mongers afraid of us. /

Racism isn’t rational but it’s profoundly human. Apparently infants have built-in negative reactions to images of people of a different race. So there’s really no reason for mystification over racism’s persistence.

Among the more serious questions to ponder are whether it’s adaptive or maladaptive and what to do about it, if anything? In the US we’re bombarded with the mantra that proclaims racial and cultural “diversity” to be a strength — contrary to a great deal of hard evidence. We’re also supposed to celebrate the population trend that will soon make the country majority-minority (like Iraq, I suppose) — without ever asking the current majority white populace if they believe that’s a sound idea. (Note: Only 24% of Americans queried in a recent poll believe their own neighborhoods should be more diverse.)

The assumption seems to be that if majority whites react badly to the current degree of diversity they must be made to like it by injecting still more diversity. I suppose the lashings will continue until morale improves. I prefer to think, however, that any nation at some point in its history takes on a certain character. And at that point its people should have the sovereign right to decide collectively — on racial, cultural or any grounds whatsoever — whether they wish to preserve that character or allow it to change.

Do you disagree? If so, who would you entrust to make such decisions?

@Palham,

Racism isn’t rational but it’s profoundly human. Apparently infants have built-in negative reactions to images of people of a different race.

Uh, no. About a week ago while at a local Dollar Tree, I had to exit an aisle that was being blocked by a black family. This required to brush past a baby carriage. As I did so, the baby offered me a drink from its baby bottle. (I declined.)

So I guess that baby didn’t get the memo.