Now, I realize that the term “race traitor” is a bit loaded, being mostly associated with white supremacists against any white person who doesn’t share their point of view. However, I think it’s appropriate here, given what some believe about Colin Powell, Condelezza Rice, Michelle Malkin, Juan Williams, and other conservative people of color.
Is there a point where, simply by holding certain political views (thus including folks like Malkin and Williams, who, unlike Powell and Rice, have little power to really influence national policy), you are betraying your race, becoming an Uncle Tom, a houseboy, or, as I said before, a race traitor? What about Log Cabin Republicans?
Well, it depends. If you honestly hold certain political views, then no. If you cravenly espouse views you don’t believe in to get political power knowing that those policies are wrong and will do damage to people of your race, religion, ethnic group or what have you, then yeah, you’re a traitor to that group. How you determine the motives of another individual is always problematic, though.
In a sense, I think. The problem is, while race is an arbitrary, artificial construct, people take it seriously, especially bigots. If you do something that aids those bigots, you are acting against your own and your family’s interest, not to mention many innocent bystanders. Because regardless of your or my opinions of the reality of race, the racists take it dead seriously, and will act on those beliefs.
If the term “race traitor” bothers you, just use “inconsiderate, self destructive fool who’s making a deal with the devil” instead.
I think a white Rhodesian who somehow aided & abetted Robert Mugabe’s purge attempts without some hope of modifying Mugabe’s views or mitigating his damage might be a race traitor; but he’d also be messing with the country in general, since apparently Mugabe ended up being bad for black Rhodesians too.
Bryan, have I posted my complaint about La Fête nationale du Québec and how it affected this dumb Yank when he tried to get some drawings plotted and delivered to Westmount last Tuesday? Me, I said, “But Canada Day isn’t until the First! And what sort of moron puts a half-assed, PROVINCIAL holiday on a TUESDAY these days?”
“Check the provincial holidays,” said a cow-orker.
D’oh! It isn’t JUST a holiday, it’s the “Fuck You, We’re Really a Country” holiday and NOTHING happens in Montreal that day except the consumption of crappy Canadian beers and wines. Including FedEx deliveries had I plotted them here and sent them. And my stupid effing customer has lived therefor years and should’ve known better than to expect them.
:mad: since a vein in my forehead is still throbbing. I HATE effing Canada.
Let’s be clear about something. Race is a social construct, but that doesn’t mean it does not exist. It just means that there is no scientific basis, not that there is no social reality of race. And I’m not trying to contradict you here, but to make it clear that one cannot dismiss race as an illusion as Bryan Ekers did in his post. Social constructs can be very real.
While I realize that people will tend to see others as part of a group based on where they come from and what they look like, I completely reject the idea that you are not your own person. The very idea of a “race traitor” assumes the person has a greater loyalty to the “group” as someone else defines it, and is not free to make his own decisions. It really gets me mad.
That’s partly why I called it an “arbitrary, artificial construct”, instead of just “imaginary”. The other is because it is real, to an extent, but arbitrary. By the latter I mean that there are more-and-less loosely related collections of genes that roughly match racial differences ( which is why one can speak of the prevalence of a particular genetic disease among this or that “race” ), so to that extent they are “real”; but they are arbitrary because there’s any number of other ways we could categorize people genetically that we don’t consider a “race”.
But it’s painfully obvious that a person is who they are in large part because of where they are from and what they look like (among other things). The more integral something is to who a person is or how they are treated, the more traitorous it is for that person to willfully undermine the values or ideals the group holds without sound reasoning and thoughtful deliberation.
Taking the stand you are taking calls in to question the idea of being a traitor in a general sense. Would you hesitate to call an American who sells arms to Iran, or John Walker Lindh a traitor?
You can make your own decisions, but you have to deal with the consequences.
I suppose, if you have someone who is Jewish, who hides his or her background, and joins the KKK, (and not undercover), yeah, I think that someone would DEFINITELY be a race traitor.
(Probably would be very unlikely, but I suppose you could have someone doing so, in a fit of self-loathing. Sort of like the old “Hitler was Jewish” theory.)
It’s rare but does happen. William Potter Gale. a leader of the white supremacist Posse Comitatus turned out to be half-black. And Google up a fellow named Douglas Wolfgang Hawke, aka Brit Greenbaum.
