I don’t know what label to append to this behavior, but its common enough. Two key ingredients for the phenomenon seem to be underrepresentation in a particular area combined with behavior that defies stereotypes.
Japanese-American baseball players? Never heard of 'em until you just mentioned them. That meets the first criteria. Japanese aren’t supposed to be good athletes, according to the stereotypes. There goes the second criteria.
Black golf players? Same thing.
White basketball players? Same thing.
I wouldn’t call it bigotry or racism. Let’s call it reactive bias. Yeah, I like the sound of that.
Did I say “exactly?” If I did, I didn’t mean it. The rant in the OP struck a familiar chord with me – the same vibe I got from Mariko. That is all.
I think anyone who likes something based on a characteristic that is not considered an objective property of an object, i.e., favoring something because it you subjectively see an attribute in it that it objectively doesn’t possess in its given context, lacks perspective.
Ichiro is the best baseball player.
is very different than:
I like Ichiro the best.
I should also mention that, according to Mariko, everything Japanese was great. Nothing American, African, Canadian, European, or Austrailian was ever brought up. It was always Japanese this, Japan that, the Emperor this, etc. I didn’t mind it, because she was a great teacher and I saw things from a different perspective. In fact, she inspired me to make a movie for a graduate history class on the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima.
I am also not complaining. I am objectively looking at her opinions and seeing a common thread. It is rather strange that people in this thread seem not to think such prejudices exist in demographics that aren’t of the WASPy kind.
Sorry. I didn’t mean to imply that you had said that; I only used that to frame my response.
And I’m also not saying the prejudices you mention don’t exist. I just think the OP himself initiated the situation where this occurred and given any number of the variables I listed, prejudice might not have been one of them.
Hold on a second there, Dudley. Where exactly do you get that from? Where has anyone in this thread suggested that this woman couldn’t be racist because she’s not white?
I don’t want to limit the discussion to racists. I didn’t assert that Mariko was a racist, because last I checked, the Japanese were not a race unto themselves.
I think in Mariko’s case, there are residual Japanese imperialist views at work there. At the basic level, I suppose it’s nationalism – perhaps jingoism.
This is actually a very good point – Arnold Palmer’s name can be used with respect to lemonade iced tea only if you are actually serving “The Original Arnold Palmer Ice Tee” manufactured under license from Arnold Palmer Enterprises.
Rigamarole: If you are just mixing any old iced tea and lemonade and serving it to your customers under the name “Arnold Palmer,” you are likely guilty of “passing off” and are at risk of liability for trademark infringement under the Lanham Trademark Act.
Well, did you ever ask her what, in her mind, constitutes the criteria for being “the best?” And was she arguing that Ichiro and Matsui are indeed objectively the best, or rather, was she stating that in her mind, they were? Because if she did, I don’t see anything wrong with it.
As others have mentioned, I have a ridiculous bias for the Texas Longhorns, and I will even argue the merits of certain players that are arguably not as good as others from different teams. Why? Because I’m a Texan.
I don’t this even rises to the level of ethnocentrism as you describe it, because it just sounds like an old lady likes certain players from her neighborhood. Nothing more.
What do you mean, what? Japanese is a race. So is French. So is Australian. These are all races. This is not a radical concept. Check out a dictionary if you don’t believe me.
Ahh! But as has been asserted in hundreds of threads on this board, there is no scientific basis for the concept of race, so Miller has reverted, by default, to the older meaning of the word, the more recent accretion having been discarded.
I’m trying to explain why Dudley and you are misunderstanding each other and you refute my statement that "generally speaking … with one (the second!) definition from a dictionary? Are you serious?
Yeah, I see the smiley, but lest anyone be misled, I don’t think anyone has denied that race exists as a social construct.
I was speaking of my anecdote with Mariko. No one has called HER racist, as far as I know.
As far as the OP is concerned, I admit that it is a logical stretch to assert that the black woman in question was a racist. I will say, however, that it is possible. Or are you of the camp that says it is not? If so, please explain.
IMHO, at the very least, the woman’s perceived tone and insistence on the drink being called a Tiger Woods is a lttle odd, but then again, the OP’s insistence that it is called an Arnold Palmer is equally as odd to me, as I’ve never heard of both.
Here’s another anecdote (and I apologize for constant sports analogies). I’m from Massachusetts. There, among white guys, it is arguable that Larry Bird is the greatest basketball player of all time. Being a basketball fan who’s well-traveled, I’ve had a discussion with several people of all races about basketball (my own little experiment, just to see). Never once has a black person agreed that Larry Bird is the best basketball player of all time. In fact, he’s hardly on the radar.
Now, this could be either way if the opinion has racial undertones (I suspect it does, although admittedly the evidence is hardly empirical). Who is racist here? Maybe both sides?
I apologize if this seems rambling. I’m just trying to get a handle on this idea of covert racism.
Dudley, I was hoping you’d respond to my questions about your Japanese relative upthread.
Regarding your most recent question… that’s pretty subjective, and I’d daresay that the default answer is “Michael Jordan.” In fact, if someone mentioned Larry Bird, I’d think it to be a rather strange answer. Bird was great, certainly. But you could argue Kareem, Dr. J., and Magic from his era as well. I really think you’re seeing more here than what’s actually going on. Now if someone dismissed Larry Bird as being great, and listed twenty Black players, some from his era, and skipped Bird, you might be on to something there. Or if you asked the follow up question: “Does the fact that Bird is White affect how you answer this question?” I might give your argument some weight.
You called her a bigot, because she likes Japanese baseball players better than players of other races. You didn’t call her a racist, but only because you don’t understand what “race” means. That, however, is beside the point, because what I was specifically objecting to was your sweeping generalization that no one was agreeing with you because they “[do not] think such prejudices exist in demographics that aren’t of the WASPy kind,” which is itself an accusation of racism, even under your peculiarly stunted definition of the word. When called on it, you went off on a tangent about how Japenese isn’t a race, ignoring the actual point of my comment, which was the entirely unwarranted assumption about the motivations of people who disagree with you. Leaving aside the definition of race entirely, allow me to rephrase my original question to you:
“Where has anyone in this thread suggested that this woman couldn’t be prejudiced because she’s not white?”
Related to my question above, who exactly makes up the camp that thinks the woman in the OP couldn’t possibly be racist? Because I have not seen a single poster in this thread who has denied that there is any chance at all that the woman in question could possibly be racist. The overwhelming majority of posters to this thread have merely pointed out that the behavior cited in the OP does not provide sufficient evidence of racist intent.
Like I said previously, she didn’t say “I think they are the best.” She said, “They are the best.” When I brought up the objective part of determining a baseball player’s skills, she’d hear nothing of it.
I don’t see how this pertains to the argument. You’re a UT fan. You’ll argue that some players on Texas are better, because you’re a UT fan. However, I am gathering that you recognize this and will at least discuss (and even bend) when faced with enough evidence.
But that’s the thing. It’s not her neighborhood. It hasn’t been since she was 17.
