I can understand when authors use race as a descriptor of a character (e.g. the black clerk) - they’re trying to paint pictures with their words, and they want you to see what they see. It would bug the hell out of me if I’d written a book featuring lots of characters and nobody thought they looked the way I, the author, imagined.
I think that’s PC hooey. If the logical default that a person is likely to assume without being given the detail is very likely to be accurate, then there is nothing unacceptable about leaving the detail off. Rob works in IT and in his (small) company at least for a time there were only maybe one or two women who worked at his location. It wouldn’t surprise me to find out that the common phrasing would be to say that “someone stopped by my cube and asked for a printer manual” if it was a guy, but to say “a lady came by my cube and asked for a printer manual” if it was a woman. Because the word “someone” in his environment is almost always going to make the other person think male by default. Doesn’t make him sexist to point out when it’s a woman. Doesn’t mean he needs to “make up for it” by always referring to everyone else as a man.
Regardless of what other meanings or whatever you want to extrapolate from the data, in our culture (at least in most parts of the US, but I am under the impression that Canada is much the same) if you don’t specify a race, white will be assumed, and will usually be the correct assumption. And in those places where white wouldn’t be assumed as the default? In those cases most likely a white person would be identified as white.
If someone goes to the bakery for a pie, you assume they are getting a dessert item. They don’t have to say it. If they are getting a meat pie, they will say it because it isn’t likely that your assumption would be correct, as most pies are desserts.
I can’t see it as anything other than pure “political correctness” to either artificially insert a detail which does not enhance your audience’s understanding simply because if it were reversed, you would note the difference, or to eliminate a detail simply because you wouldn’t have inserted it if it were reversed. Does that make sense? So the idea that the only way that it would be acceptable for me to point out that the driver was black is if I then made sure to always refer to white drivers as white…well it’s nothing more than PC BS to me.
Now it is a whole different ball of wax if the motive for adding the racial identifier is to cause you to attach a bunch of preconceived notions to the person. That’s racist and offensive. But simply using race to be more descriptive? Sorry, I just don’t see the problem.
This is where the party ends
I cant stand here listening to you
And your racist friend
I know politics bore you
But I feel like a hypocrite talking to you
And your racist friend
-They Might Be Giants, Your Racist Friend
It’s very simple to me: for me, racism displays a very major character flaw. One I’m not willing to associate with.
Would you care if you found out someone was a rapist or a child molester? I realize those are also illegal, but if it bothered you, would it only bother you because “gosh, turns out Bob was breakin’ the law!” or would it bother you because “gosh, turns out Bob is the kind of person who gets his jollies diddling preschoolers!” Major character flaw. Says a lot about someone and what kind of person they are. Racists? Not the kind of people I want to be around. So yes, it does bother me. And the idea that you don’t really care when you actually see it happen against someone (not just overhear two white guys cracking racist jokes to each other) just boggles my mind. Especially if you know the people involved.
matt gave a very good reason for providing gender but not race. A couple more:
- Our language, like many languages, is innately gendered; it’s not innately raced.
- Gender is a (mostly) discrete category with many biological (and probably psychological) attributes; recognizing gender is something inherent to being a mammal. Race is not.
- Removing gender often lengthens a statement, or involves using slightly more complex language: “This person cut me off” instead of “this guy cut me off,” for example. Removing race does not.
I don’t object to folks mentioning race when they do so for reasons of physical description: as someone said, after sex, race is the first thing that most Americans (if not most humans) notice about another person, especially when it’s a race different from their own. It does irritate me when it’s mentioned only because it’s different from the speaker’s. I don’t know if that’s rational, but there it is.
Jet Jaguar, Askia’s advice is as always very good. One more bit of advice: get hold of one of the Flashman novels. The protagonist of these novels is as bigoted a reprobate as you could possibly hope for, often to an uncomfortable extent; but the author manages to make it work, by embracing Flashman’s obnoxiousness.
Daniel
OpalCat, I hear what your saying, what I was really trying to understand why some whites react so strongly when they hear comments or jokes about minorities. To me, it seems whites are the only race who does this. I mean, do Mexicans get upset when they hear negative comments about blacks? Do Koreans get mad if they hear a Mexican joke? I am not doubting that in your case the outrage is genuine, but in my experience a lot of the whites I see doing this don’t really care one way or another, it just gives them an opportunity to feel superior over those who would be “low” enough to tell a racist joke or whatever. I mean, if you (not you specifically) feel so strongly about it, and hate racism so much, why not do something in the community or socially to help eradicate it? It just seems to me that it is usually a bit pompous, and ironically even a bit racist- it’s like the thought process is “blacks need for me to stick up for them by denouncing this type of joke”. A hypothetical white who has been a victim of a crime or two committed by blacks- would he not be sort of kind of a little bit justified if he held a negative general view of the race as a result? In this case, I don’t think it would be a “character flaw”. So without knowing the individual, or their reasons for thinking a certain way on any subject, you can’t really lump them all in the same group. There was an 11 year old girl on Dateline in a group home who hates all men b/c she was sexaully abused by men as a child- totally udnerstandable in this case. And while some people are afraid to admit it, it is not automatically “racist” if you have a negative view of a race if people of that race have done specific things to you to harm you. I also find most of the white who hate racism so much, usually have little or no contact with minorites. It is easy to not understand racism if you live in Pierre, South Dakota, much easier to understand it if you live in East Palo Alto.
If you haven’t already read it, Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell would probably interest you re: authenticity of period voices. Plus it’s a great book.
…except that treating white people as the ‘default’ has far vaster social implications than considering the dessert pie the prototypical pie. According one thing the status of being that which is basic tends to lend that thing prestige-- as for the case of white people in the US, it taps strongly into the idea that white people are the “basic” Americans and people that look otherwise are transplants (“Where are you from? No, where are you, like, really from?”).
The examples are both the same in most ways, except who cares if people feel that meat pies are “the other”?
I don’t find racist jokes funny, but I can find racial jokes funny. Motive and tone are huge factors here. A good example: I think Carlos Mencia’s standup (NOT his show, which is lame) is hilarious. And a big chunk of it is based around race. But I don’t feel that Carlos Mencia dislikes other races or looks down on them or anything (and hell he tells the most jokes about his own race) he just makes fun of observable trends or tendencies or whatever. But if I heard someone tell a joke about a “dumb nigger” or something, yeah I’d be mad. More disgusted than mad, actually. And the person’s value as a human in my eyes would drop through the floor.
As for the other point you make I’m not sure I totally agree with you but I don’t totally disagree, either. I can see if you have been victimized or harmed by people from a given race, that you might have an initial conditioned response that was negative… say you’d been mugged by a black guy. I can see you maybe having a moment of fear when you come across a black guy in a mugging-possible setting. But if you let it carry past that, especially if you consciously thought differently of black people as a whole because of it? No, that’s not justified.
I used to have a dislike for the sound of Spanish being spoken. I thought it “sounded dirty”. The reason was that as a girl growing up in Tucson, when I usually heard Spanish (nobody I knew really spoke it around me growing up) it was being shouted by construction workers or landscapers or whatever out of the back of a pickup truck at me as I was walking down the street on my way home from school. It took conscious effort and time to shake that association.
There is always a certain “prestige” to being in the majority. That’s human nature. We’ll have to agree to disagree on this one because I honestly just don’t feel that there is anything sinister about someone using race as a descriptive adjective to differentiate that person from the default mental picture the listener is likely to have, and not using it when it won’t differentiate them. Sorry.
You’re close – it was 75.1% as of the 2000 census.
Don Logan,
In a nutshell, it’s the basic “if you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.” If I don’t condone the behavior and I let the person know about it, IMO, that’s part of the solution.
If you saw someone kick a bunny across the lawn like a football it wouldn’t be hurting you directly, but I’m betting you wouldn’t condone it.
I do something socially to help eradicate it: When people relate racist jokes I discourage them.
You seem to be implying that the only appropriate way to fight racism is in large scale protests or formal groups. That is a rather silly position to take, do you not think?
Thanks for the advice, I can make something along those lines work. The protagonist is not racist so much as nationalistic, “…thankful that Providence saw fit that I had been born an Englishman”, and therefore believes his countrymen generally superior to everyone else, a common sentiment at the time. It’s only a tiny part of the story really, but these prejudices are part of the age he lives in.
I’ll be sure to check out some of those books mentioned, too.
Indygrrl, point taken. But the difference is, kicking a bunny causes injury to the bunny. Most racist jokes are not told in a mean spirited way and then followed up by an physical attack on the race that is the butt of the joke. Most jokes like these, you hear in the office or a friends house, and the person telling it is more than likely not a “racist”. I love a good joke, if it’s funny, I’ll tell it, or laugh at it, regardless of subject matter. My favorite type of ethnic joke are the drunken Irish or buggering Greek jokes, just because those types of jokes are ones I seem to find most amusing. It doesn’t mean while telling or laughing at one, I am doing so b/c deep down I have a hatred for Irish or Greeks. And I find it usually the case, if you tell a European race joke, no one tags you as a racist against that group, but tell a black joke and you automatically are a closeted Neo Nazi? I just feel whites in the US often times go overboard to show that they are not racists against blacks sometimes, and just should lighten up a bit. The best way IMO to show you are not a racist is to not care about such jokes, not to be offended at them.
The problem with this is that unless you know your audience well, you can be reinforcing their racist ideas and making them think you’re one of them. I appreciate a clever joke, but there’s no fuckin’ way I’m going to repeat it to someone who actually embraces the humor as gospel…I don’t care how funny it is.
Call me weird or my life experience rare, but being white, I have on dozens of occasions had other whites that I don’t know well at all from work or school or whatever tell me a racist joke or drop a racist term in a sentence, oddly enough I see this as sort of a “bonding” thing, for lack of a better term. And to me, to then respond with an anti-racist tirade when the person more than likely means nothing by it, and was probably only trying in an admittedly peculiar way to make friends, would make me look like the asshole. Again, definitely making the distinction between harmless comments and ones with bad intent.
If someone is using racist jokes as a bonding thing, the comments are probably being made with bad intent. It sounds like an “us against them” scenario to me. By the way, you don’t have to go off on a tirade to express your disapproval. A simple, “Not cool, dude” or responding with a blank stare will suffice.
Don Logan, ever hear the saying, “First they came for the Communists, and I did not speak up because I was not a communist…then they came for me, and there was no one left to stand up for me.” It’s like that.
If you don’t speak up, you’re condoning it.
Yea, I was gonna quote the Hitler thing in my post, but thought surely no one would make a conenction between a comment said as a joke and Nazi Germany or wherever the comment originated. I will now drop my argument becaue I see I am losing, but still hold my opinion that it is doubtful the guy at the water cooler making an off color comment is really a KKK recruiter trying to gauge my reaction to see if I would make a good member. And yes the old standard “I have many black friends” cliche applies, I just personally don’t feel the need to champion their cause every time I hear a racist comment, but maybe that is a fault in my makeup 
I’ve got to agree with OpalCat on this one.
If contextually one would expect certain traits, adding the descriptor is unhelpful, while if a trait is one that is unexpected, the descriptor adds value.
In a mostly white community, describing someone as black is useful, as it helps people to form a more accurate picture. Conversely, in a mostly black community, describing someone as white would also be useful.
Generally I don’t describe myself as straight, but often, in theatrical contexts, that descriptor is applied to me, because I end up being the one that’s different than the norm. Which is fine.
So, it’s all about what one expects. If a listener is going to think “white, 2.5 kids, blah blah,” when you say, “I saw this guy,” and that is not an accurate description, then there’s nothing wrong with helping to shape the image a listener is getting.
“I saw this kid…”
“I saw this black guy…”
I’m not saying that those things would necessarially be relevent to the events in a story, but they help us form a picture, visually or otherwise, of people in our stories. We like description, generally; it’s at least half of what story-telling is all about.
Interestingly, I think that I tend to re-phrase things a lot and might say, “I saw this guy… black, tall, short hair…” or something. Instead of ‘black guy,’ it’s a guy with various traits, one of which is his skin color. For me, it makes it more about describing the situation, and less about defining the person by color.