I agree that there is some distinction, in that she’s not some one-off speaker. But my guess is the hiring is the same–I doubt they asked to review her every materials, nor would they require that a trainer utter only approved institutional statements. Therefore, I continue to think it’s hard to claim that her statements necessarily reflect U of D’s beliefs.
Nor do I think her wacky ideas have more penetrative potential–even though she is training staff people, these staff people presumably have as much ability as students do to take and leave material according to its value and lack of craziness.
I think she’s an embarrassment to the U, but I don’t think a reasonable person should infer that her statements represent the U’s beliefs.
Sensible liberals do struggle against (to borrow your term) garbage diversity. Witness U-M’s attempt to kick “By Any Means Necessary” out of their court case. But liberals have the same problem I think conservatives do–they fret (perhaps overmuch) about whom they might alienate. One hopes that reasonable people would understand why a group rejects extremist distortions of their beliefs, but you worry about the UN-reasonable ones. Both sides have a real problem with this.
I guess I’ll skip the three pages of flamefest and go back to the subject of the OP. The OP only included half of the quote defining racist. I’ll post the whole paragraph, from here
As is the case in many of these pit rants filled with outrage, I don’t really see what the big deal is. Her statement doesn’t seem that offensive to me when applied to US society. It goes like this:
a) Racists are people who are privileged by society and live in a society that manifests racist characteristics in its culture. (Implied - the USA is such one culture.)
b) In the USA, people who are white have built-in privileges due to the color of their skin. People that are black do not.
c) From a) and b), we conclude that a white person is, by default, a racist, in the USA. Black people are not.
P.S. Black people can have prejudices but society doesn’t give them the power to act on those prejudices therefore they are not racists if you use my definition in point a).
I think this is perfectly fine as a starting discussion point.
Things to consider:
Is the definition of racism (point a) a good definition? Should another term be used for clarity, instead of racism, to represent the idea expressed in point a? (Is the implication in point a stlll true?)
Is the statement in point b still true? Or has the USA truly become a color-blind society?
I would be interested in seeing how this was presented in the training. As in many case, pulling out one quote from a document can start people ranting and raving on the internet but with more background it can be understandable.
Disclaimer: as a matter of fact I attended a training on racism / cultural diversity that started with these very same discussion points ( it was for a non-profit group I belong to). The training included people of many different cultural and racial backgrounds. It was very informative, in my opinion, and led to an intelligent discussion.
I will also add that in the living experience of many people, the US society was racist in recent history. I’m not prepared to start the debate if it is racist now.
An amusing anecdote from that training (it happened in the early 1990s).
There is a chain of stores in California and the West Coast in general called Nordstrom’s. The staff at that chain are well-known for being very helpful. One person in the seminar (a black young man who went to a college in an affluent neighborhood in Los Angeles) used to have a bet with his white friends. Pick one of his white friends, have both of them dress in similar clothing, go to the Nordstrom’s at the mall. Each, in turn, would enter Nordstrom’s on the ground floor, walk slowly from one end of the store to the other, turn back, and come through the same entrance. The bet was that a clerk would ask the white student if he needed help but that the black student would not be asked if he needed help. The person in the seminar (the black student) said he never lost his bet. He was doing this with his friend in the late 1980s.
I realize this is an anecdote, subject to confirmation bias etc., but the guy was not prone to exaggeration from what I knew of him. For the record he did not think that current US society was racist.
The mainstream left don’t condemn it because (a) it is so obscure that almost no one has heard of it (I had never heard of this wackjob before you went into RO mode) and (b) most mainstream lefties have better things to do than condemn each and every radical leftwing nutjob. Do you think conservatives should issue daily statements condemning the latest rightwing fringe nutbag who is brought to their attention? Face it; you are grasping for straws. Admit you fucked up, and end this farce.
Then you’ll surely be able to point to numerous examples of other people who have espoused the same views as Dr Butler allegedly did. Can you do so for us? Give us two cites for other diversity trainers who have said that all white people are racist.
I’m also ignoring the pissing contest that has been going on between the godless communists and the goose-stepping Nazis (but, then again, what’s a Pit thread without pointless name calling and irrationality) and will attempt to look at your post.
In the section I bolded above you say it makes sense when applied to US society. However, if you look at her definition:
you see she is not referring to a racist society she is referring to racist individual. Notice her use of the word “one”. She then follows up by stating that can be prejudiced but not racist because US society places them at a disadvantage.
I agree with her that people of color can be prejudiced but dismiss completely the notion that they are incapable of being racist. You mean to say that Jesse Jackson’s “Hymie-town” statement could not be considered racist? He is a man of power and privilege and made a comment about a different ethnic group. Eddie Jordan, a black DA fired 43 white attorneys He was found guilty of racial discrimination, but he’s not a racist?
Anyone can be racist. Asian people can hate whites. Black people can think that Hispanic people are _____________ (fill in the blank). Remember the movie Crash.
Everyone is prejudiced in one form or another and to one degree or another. It is how they act upon it. Do they act upon their prejudices or do they overcome them? It is akin to a phobia, an irrational fear or belief. Prejudice is the thought. Racism is the act. If the person cannot overcome an irrational thought then they have a problem.
As for UD hiring a person to provide training, they are liable for what is being taught. Whenever I hire someone, I am responsible for reviewing their resume, critiquing their CV. I discuss with them their qualifications and expertise so I know what kind of person they are and will they be a fit with our organization. UD didn’t just flip through a phone book and stick a pin in at random. They had to find out about her and review her writings, possibly review previous presentations and training materials she had used to see if they were acceptable. To do any less is gross incompetence on their part. By hiring her and vetting her course material, they are giving tantamount approval of her teaching methods and philosophy.
Dr. Butler’s beliefs are based on the definitions of the Sharon Martinas of the Challenging White Supremacy workshop. Not to try to make them look like loons but take a look at the 4th page of thispdf and see who it is credited to.
The ideals of inclusion and tolerance are traditionally considered more liberal than conservative beliefs. The CWS, and in turn Dr. Butler, present extremist views. Same as Pat Buchanan’s speeches are an extreme stretching of conservative beliefs. If you heard some homeless person on a street corner saying some of this stuff you’d roll your eyes and wonder when the ambulance was going to take him back to his padded cell. But when a university pays someone to express views like this, they should expect their reputation to be tarnished.
erie774, I think the main problem is using the word “racist” to describe “someone who has a built-in advantage in a certain society because of their skin colour.” (Always a confusing and bad starting point for a discussion in my opinion - “let me take a word that usually means X, I’m going to define it as Y, and now remember that every time I use the word it means Y and not X.”)
In your examples, I would not say that Jesse Jackson or Eddie Jordan had a built-in advantage because of their skin color. They had a built-in advantage because of their job function or their prominence in society.
An example of “racism” matching the definition given would be:
any white person (from the town drunk or the mayor of the Montgomery) could have told Rosa Parks “go sit or stand in the back and give me your seat.” That would have been an example where any white person had an advantage based on their skin color.
I think you missed the point. She’s saying that “racism” in the case of an individual is defined merely by the racial status of that individual in a racist society.
This definition acknowledges that an individual of whatever race can be individually prejudiced/hostile/bigoted/hateful/discriminatory/what-have-you towards members of other races. I don’t think any of these “societal definition of racism” folks would argue that anti-white bigotry/prejudice/hostility/etc. can’t exist among non-white individuals.
All they’re saying is that such anti-white bigotry can’t be called racism, because they’re reserving the term “racism” exclusively as an inherent characteristic of the society, rather than of individual opinions or beliefs.
By this interpretation, all white individuals in the US are racist, even if they’re NOT personally bigoted/prejudiced/hostile/discriminatory towards non-whites in any way. No non-white individuals in the US are racist, even if they ARE personally bigoted/prejudiced/hostile/discriminatory towards whites. “Racist” is simply a descriptor of one’s racial status in a racist society.
As I’ve repeatedly said, I think this is an unhelpful and confusing way to interpret “racism”. But it is not the same thing as saying that all white people are personally bigoted and discriminatory, while no non-white people are personally bigoted and discriminatory, as you seem to think. The whole point of this interpretation is to separate the term “racism” from individual personal beliefs and opinions about race.
Gross incompetence? Well, i guess this is one viewpoint, but I honestly don’t think this is the usual standard for finding someone to come in and run a workshop. You do a little checking, see if they have experience, see if other clients liked their work. But I don’t think it’s unreasonable to stop somewhere short of review every bit of their materials and read all their writings.
Perhaps it would be preferable for them to review it all. However, I don’t believe its “gross incompetence” if they didn’t.
Oh, so you can’t let me know about all the other conservatives shouted off campus stages. I can plug “fake moon landing” into a search engine & get plenty of hits.
If there’s “no real argument about this”–what are you doing here?
I think you’re being much too generous concerning this person’s intentions and motives. The term “racist” carries with it a moral stigma that can’t easily be detached. By arbitrarily re-defining racism in such a way that only whites can ever be guilty of it, she is attempting to place whites in a position where they’ll automatically be at a psychological disadvantage in any exchange with non-whites about racial matters. It isn’t about clarifying meaning; it’s about psychological manipulation and control.
I probably missed it, but I didn’t see anything in this thread concerning this person’s intentions and motives. What I saw was a shortened quote from a document that was presumably part of her training.
I’ll say again that I was part of a racism / diversity training that used this as a starting point, and I, as a white member of the audience, did not feel belittled or guilty in any way in the ensuing discussion just because of this choice as a starting point.
** Kimstu **, I’m not quoting your piece because it falls in line with Arnold’s. Please look at the definition she provided again and look specifically at the bolded section
Jackson and Jordan had power to back up their prejudices. This puts lie to her idea. If people of color have power and make racist statements they are therefore racists.
We can give examples that match her definition of “racism” but that does not make it an accurate definition. I could define a “book” as collection of hairy Brazilian grapes that are frequently served in a casserole of wombat spleens and macaroni. Just because I make up a definition doesn’t make it right or accurate.
You know and I know that the definition of “racism” she uses is so slanted that it is almost horizontal. What burns my buns is the mental calisthenics that people go through to justify it. It’s this kind of logic that let’s people say, “Well, Saddam used to be working on WMDs. He even used them against people. And he says that he hates America. Therefore, he must still have them and so we have to go to Iraq and take him out.” Illogical and incorrect thinking cannot be justified, no matter who does it.
