Johnny Cochran would probably still have leapt up and objected, saying it was a racist statement. :rolleyes: He really didn’t want any witnesses who could place O.J. at the scene.
I didn’t realize this thread had awakened.
I believe it is possible to use someone’s skin color/salient ethnic characteristics to describe them without being racist. I mean, say you’ve got 25 guys in uniform, hatless, no glasses, military recruit haircuts. Only one of them is black. Or for that matter, only one of them is white/pale-skinned. Surely it’s not “racist” to say, the white guy or the black guy?
People’s skin color and physical characteristics are part of their identity, sometimes from birth, sometimes added later by choice or not. My late husband did not mind being identified as the guy with the prosthetic leg. I spend a fair amount of money maintaining my red hair, so people jolly well better mention it.
Extra credit: If you’re describing the person to a blind colleague, is it okay to say black, Asian, in a wheelchair, wears dreadlocks, covered with tattoos, drop dead gorgeous, large bazooms, missing a nose? Okay, sorry, I’m giddy now. Waiting for the dryer to finish at my mom’s assisted living facility. My Saturday recreation.
This will be subjective but it is important that the entire concept of race is only a sociological construct, and is absolutely not based in any biological reality.
Referring to someones race in relation to the costs, limitations or privileges caused by that social construct is not generally considered racist.
Making claims or predictions based on the membership in those completely arbitrary, non-biological groupings is always racist. There is still the very real question if this is an implicit or an explicit bias, and in general the term “racist” is reserved for explicit bias but it is still “racist” when used in an implicit fashion.
It’s a dialect, and dialects can be learned by people not belonging to that group. Learning how to mimic dialects is part of a proper actor’s training, and some comedians have a natural talent for it and use that.
And that has been pointed out several times already in this thread as okay.
But the very examples you gave were the opposite.
And the first start would be to acknowledge, as has been said several times, too, in this thread, that THERE ARE NO DIFFERENT HUMAN RACES. So if you talk about black not as skin colour, but as race, you are already - even if only subconsciouly - accepting racist ideology. That’s why it’s not okay.
And because it’s not their choice, making any statement beyond “Joe is the black-skinned guy among the 20 white-skinned guys in this room” is making assumptions.
Yes, black people in the US will be treated differently through their life than white people.
That doesn’t mean that the black person standing in front of you has that experience. Maybe, like Obama, he is from Africa and grew up in a majorly non-white place so he learned a very different self-attitude than his wife who grew up in Chicago as child of African-Americans.
Tattoos are put there by choice, but assuming that everybody with a tatoo is a biker or gangster (or Yakuza, as is the stereotype in Japan, where people with tatoos are often banned from public hot baths for that reason) can still be wrong, with so many non-bikers, non-criminals getting tatoos for artistic reasons.
It’s nice of him that he didn’t mind. That doesn’t make him the speaker for all people with prosthetics that it’s ok. In fact there are several ad campaigns here to look beyond the obvious disability and see the person who is much more than just “the prosthetic leg” or “the wheelchair”
So you wouldn’t mind if somebody said “Gingers have no souls” (South park) or “don’t get upset, everybody knows that red-hairs are temperemental”? (Of course, today it’s just words. A few centuries back, red-haired people were likely to be accused as witches, as gays and albinos are still accused of in some parts of Africa today).
If you are telling your blind friend John about your colleauge Bob, and you know Bob’s story because you are also good friends with Bob, then it might relevant. Or not. It depends on how Bob himself described it. If Bob is black and grew up in the South, John will assume certain negative experiences.
If Bob says himself “Every second white person in this company comes up to me and touches my hair, because they have never seen a black person with curly hair before, I’m so sick and tired of it” that would be relevant.
But maybe Bob grew up in a normal suburb of New York, where nobody cared much about his skin colour, because there were dozens different colours in his school - so Bob doesn’t mention it, so why should you tell John?
A lot of people find it refreshing to talk with blind people because they don’t get judged on how they look, but are taken for their personality. A lot of blind people say that they prefer not to get distracted by superficial attitudes, only to listen to the quality of the voice and what the person is saying as giving them better insight.
For much the same reason some people refer to “Identifies as male/identifies as female” instead of “Male/Female”, I would hazard a guess - this trendy new idea that things like gender and ethnicity are social constructs or whatever and while saying someone is black or white skinned is a statement of fact, saying they’re black or white doesn’t take into account their own self-identification.
I belive that’s the theory, at least.
Personally, I still don’t understand why “Coloured” is (at best) something one’s well-meaning but out-of-touch grandmother would use, while “Person of Colour” is the Current Trendy & Approved Nomenclature.
I’m sorry, I don’t have time to read the latest responses, as I’m on the run. But a question just occurred to me: when does stereotyping become racism?
Actually, that’s incorrect. NAACP. stands for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, although “colored people” is, itself, an outdated term and not considered politically correct today.
Thanks for the correction. I mis-remembered that there is one group founded so early that its name contains “Negro”, but because it’s so old it was decided not to change it.
Ah, it’s the United Negro College Fund UNCF - Wikipedia
constanze is German. Her caps tend to get randomized when she’s writing in English; more when she’s writing quickly or feeling particularly excited.
Stereotyping becomes racism when it’s race based. I don’t think that “speaking of race” is always racist, but anything which considers any item such as apparent ethnicity (1) or actual ethnical background (2) as determinants of behavior, rather than as descriptors, is racist. “Joe is the tall guy” isn’t a heightist expression, but “tall guys are so full of themselves” is.
(1) and (2) don’t always match.
Not necessarily: if they’re not 100% blind, or if they used to be able to see, then the visual descriptors are perfectly valid. Some of them are valid even if they’ve never seen: a short person’s voice comes from further down than a tall one’s.
[QUOTE=rat avatar]
This will be subjective but it is important that the entire concept of race is only a sociological construct, and is absolutely not based in any biological reality.
[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=constanze]
And the first start would be to acknowledge, as has been said several times, too, in this thread, that THERE ARE NO DIFFERENT HUMAN RACES.
[/QUOTE]
You are at least right to recognize the difficulty in drawing a sharp line between “white people” and “black people”. All concepts require rigorous definition before debates can be resolved in any intelligent manner. The very fact that interracial couples can marry proves that racial taxonomy is profoundly complex.
However, informally speaking, wouldn’t you regard it as usually extremely obvious when a person is white and when a person is black? And that there are biological characteristics underlying these obvious distinctions that geneticists haven’t gone to the trouble to pin down, partly on account of the fact that discussion of genetic and phenotypic differences among races is still pointlessly taboo?
Even if, scientifically speaking, there is no such thing as “race,” there is definitely a phenomenon known as “racism,” which is what I was hoping this discussion would be about.
The fact that you even inquire about the definition of “racism” shows that you have concern for disadvantaged people, which I’m sure they appreciate. The problem seems to be that our society can’t even agree on a definition.
As an example of the way in which definitions falter, let’s take a look at the Oxford definition given in this thread:
[QUOTE=DJYoungEsq]
1.1 The belief that all members of each race possess characteristics, abilities, or qualities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races.
[QUOTE]
To really exercise our intelligence, we have to be scientific about definitions. What does “belief” mean? We know that beliefs are somehow related to human actions, as I believe a raincoat is in the closet when I open the door to get it. But the precise way in which beliefs relate to actions, and even what beliefs are, is subject to continuing controversial dispute. Some people don’t even think beliefs exist.
Even if you replace the word “belief” with the word “claim,” you then have to clarify what sort of claims should be considered as regarding a race “inferior” or “superior” to another.
In the absence of any clear definition of “racism,” one is left to wonder why it’s such a commonly used word. I have my own theory which you may or may not like. Accusations of racism, such as those that occur when you remark of someone’s “sounding black,” stem from the United States’ lazy, warmongering culture. Undoubtedly there is some legitimate concern, but Americans have a need to browbeat others for their failings to make themselves look better, and morality provides them with an outlet for their aggression.
The problem is that Americans are not interested in studying the monumental efforts of great thinkers to define the nature of right and wrong. Nor are they interested in investigating it themselves, as either option requires active thinking and contemplation, which they abhor. Instead, they settle for the most basic judgements that require minimal cognitive effort and these ultimately include the accusation of “racism.” Eventually it becomes rooted in our society, so that even otherwise intelligent people become intimidated into passing along the term.
As an example, take the word “nigger.” People are overly hysterical about this word. Like all other words, it borrows its emotional significance from the context in which it is typically used. I guarantee you that if it were suddenly used as a compliment, as in, “You are one bad-ass nigger,” it would over time lose its racist connotations and become a word that was perfectly acceptable. What makes it so appetizing as a pretext for violent censure is that it’s easy to hear when someone says it. It does not require any higher-order cognition to determine when someone has said “nigger,” which allows even the most braindead of citizens to sit at the judge’s bench and decree the speaker guilty of having violated their sacred moral law.
Given this account, it is easy to see why we have the word “nigger” rubbed in our faces by drivers who blast their bass at 150 decibels: they want to hear us say it, so they can punish us.
If you want my advice, the best way to show kindness toward minorities is to focus on making their lives better. Whether certain imagined slights or gestures are considered racist is only secondary to this social and economic aim.