In any Internet discussion of bad behavior -- Harlan Ellison grabbing Connie Willis's breast at the Hugo Awards, RaceFail, MammothFail, and now Hoss Gifford at FlashBelt -- the same argument surfaces almost immediately: He's not a sexist. She's not a racist. He or she does many wonderful things for and with many people of the offended minority, and that proves she's a good person.
Even he who is pure of heart And says his prayers at night May become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms And the moon is full and bright.
Or, to ungeek, it's not about who you are, it's about what you did. Good, kind, well-intentioned people can do racist and sexist and ablist and ... things. Saying "X isn't a racist" tries to derail the conversation from behavior to character. You can win the character argument -- you have friends, you have people you've treated well, you have character witnesses. You can't win the argument about what you just did.
I'm a nice person. I mean well. I have friends who will testify to my good character. Last month a white friend of mine was in conflict with a black friend. I reflexively shut the black friend down for bad manners, when she was not being rude. Then, panicked, I defended myself and said more and more stupid -- and racist -- things. Similarly, last week I made a slighting and ablist joke without even thinking about it.
It doesn't matter how "nice" a person I am. What matters is the racist way I behaved. What's in my heart is my problem and my responsibility; so is what's in my fingertips, my face, and my mouth. I can't excuse what I did based on who I am. I have a lot of stuff in my heart and my brain I need to work on, and that I'll be working on for the rest of my life. And, yeah, it's racist right down to the firmware. That stuff I'm accountable for to God; what I do, I'm accountable for to humans.
Captain Corcoran: I am the last person to insult a British sailor, Sir Joseph. Sir Joseph: You are the last person who did, Captain Corcoran.
i think the innate reasoning behind so many people pulling out the 'anti-ist' card in defense of an otherwise uncharacteristic faux pas is the idea that the thought leads to the deed. but when you get right down to it, how do we tell somebody's a racist/sexist/whatever-ist? by their deeds. they just get the label because they exhibit the behavior a little more often, or a little more on purpose, or whatever.
I think it's more than that. I think we all know that a "racist" or "sexist" is a BAD PERSON. And nobody wants to be a BAD PERSON. So accepting "I did a racist thing" is accepting "I am a BAD PERSON", which shortcuts all future thought.
So accepting "I did a racist thing" is accepting "I am a BAD PERSON", which shortcuts all future thought.
maybe that's the key then...separating the two concepts. if you can work with the idea that 'i just did an unwittingly racist/sexist thing' does NOT equal 'i AM a racist/sexist', then maybe some headway could be made. i think you're right, it's the blanket label that turns peoples' brains off...and if we concentrated on the specific behavior at a specific moment instead painting the whole person with the 'ist' brush for one observed infraction, then there'd be more room for analysis and discussion.
But the thing is, the offenders themselves make that argument. "You did racist thing X." "I AM NOT A RACIST !1!1!!!!"
Very few of the racism/sexism/... arguments I have seen started with "Person Blah is a racist". All the ones I've witnessed started with "Person Blah did an ...ist thing." And immediately the defenders chorused "Person blah is NOT an ....ist."
that's what i mean - if we could somehow get rid of the inferred, unspoken label at the beginning of the discussion, it would avoid a lot of point-dodging: 'person x is NOT a racist/sexist/whatever-ist!' 'i didn't say they were. i said they just did a racist/sexist/whatever-ist thing. and if that's out of character for them, then i think that's interesting...let's talk about why they might have exhibited such an uncharacteristic behavior.'
i suppose the real question here is why our brains all immediately jump to the 'label' conclusion, even when it might not be implied: personally, i think it might be a defensive smokescreen on the part of the accused more than any real accusation by the observer...since, as you said, the label immediately provides an excuse for the accused / defenders not to actually think about the offending behavior.
"You're usually such a lovely person and I'm certainly not saying you're sexist, but, and please don't take this in the wrong way, could it possibly be construed as uncharacteristically offensive for you to place your hand upon my personal bosom without receiving my prior explicit consent or, furthermore, to later blame cabals of internet meanies for making you question your perception of yourself by disliking the way you defend placing your digits on me?"
I ... don't think disclaimers would work, even if this one weren't totally sarcastic. I can see what you're saying about removing excuses, but I don't think disclaimers avoid point-dodging and add insult to injury by keeping the causation external. You might be right that the observed is seeking an excuse to avoid thinking about the offending behavior, but there's always another excuse.
But they didn't mean to do anything inappropriate, and as the categorical imperative tells us;
...impso facto and QED they couldn't possible have done anything inappropriate.
Remember that they are not arguing to convince you of anything, but to put up such an impenetrable wall of stupid that you will shut up and go away and be quiet. Because they have decided that anyone criticising them for any reason is just a hater who is hating - it's why once we get past the categorical imperative their next tactic will usually involve a liberal use fo the scalzi-neoprodigy defense; in which they equate random trolls calling them names for the lolz with a well reasoned and argued critique of their behaviour to justify their increasingly hostile and bad faith, treatment of critics.
The last time I was looking, Scalzi had done the right thing -- not only apologized, but handed the floor over to Mary Anne Mohanraj to talk and moderated the comments. Has he messed up since?
However some people found there was some issue with how he set up MA Mohanraj on his blog so that a 'proper' (i.e. scalzi approved) conversation about race in sci-fi could occur, which of course implies that all the conversations up to that point were invalid in some way.
which of course was part of the problem with the original faily post he was trying to make up for, so...
If that was his original intent, he realized fairly soon that it was much harder than he realized, and said so. (I forget whether it was in the comments or the post, but he had a second "Oh! I get it! This is harder than I thought!" moment.)
I'm not one of the people originally offended, and I do not claim to speak for anybody but me. My impression of him, throughout the Mohanraj period, was of a man trying to do the right thing and learning from his mistakes.
But the problem is, as many euphemisms as you try to use, the person you are talking to will still know that what you're trying to say is "that was racially insensitive" or "that was based on a homophobic stereotype" or whatever. There's really no point in trying to disguise what you're trying to say, because 99.5% of the time, people will still react as though you had out and out said "You're a racist."
And even if they didn't, the conversation would still end up in the same place, like this:
"Excuse me, I know you didn't mean it the way it sounded, but when you said X, it was inappropriate."
"Who gets to decide what's 'inappropriate' anyway? Who are you to come into my space and tell me I have to live up to your standards of politeness! We're just joking around here, humor is often inappropriate. Don't be anti-free-speech! I have First Amendment rights!"
"Okay, but I just thought you might want to know that what you said was hurtful."
"How silly! Anything I say could randomly offend *somebody*, if I worried about that I'd never talk at all! What do you mean, hurtful?"
"It was based on an outdated stereotype."
"I have no idea what you mean! I live in a void without history or culture! What sort of stereotype are you talking about?"
"A racially based stereotype."
"OMG YOU'RE CALLING ME RACIST, I'M NOT A RACIST."
And then you're right back to the original problem:
"Excuse me, what you said is based on a racial stereotype."
"OMG YOU'RE CALLING ME RACIST, I'M NOT A RACIST."
"I'm not saying you're a racist, but you did [do X], and it was inappropriate, and I'd like an apology."
"How dare you accuse me of doing such a thing! I just said I was not racist, therefore I couldn't possibly have done that. So why are you still accusing me? I'm incredibly hurt and scared by your aggressive and irrational accusations. Anyone who would attack me by calling me a racist is far too irrational to speak to, and has lowered themselves so much that I can feel morally correct in attacking them as viciously as possible, since they have proved they do not deserve civilized treatment." [Cue flaming, anonymous trolling, personal attacks, outing, etc.]
of course people are always going to be defensive when you call them on offensive behavior. that's no reason not to engage with them, though...and if you can approach it in the right way, sometimes, you can actually get them to listen instead of closing down.
and if you can approach it in the right way, sometimes, you can actually get them to listen instead of closing down.
And, just to get this straight, in your opinion, the "right way" to educate people about racism is to only speak in vague generalities and never actually mention the concept of race?
Because I'm not advising *rudeness*. I'm not saying we should start out with "Clearly you're a racist, you giant racist!"
What I'm saying is that if you are attempting to point out that someone has made a racist comment, there is *no level of euphemism* that is going to be gentle enough to keep that person from realizing that yes, you are asking them to retract/apologize for a racist comment.
just to get this straight, in your opinion, the "right way" to educate people about racism
nope. i wasn't talking about racism, just 'isms' in general...and i'm not remotely bold enough to think that anything i'm going to do will be clever or profound enough to 'educate' anyone. all i can do is try to let them know that something they did offended me, in language that doesn't classify them, but instead focuses on the specific behavior that caused the offense.
personally, i've used this approach a few times when people have made gender-based remarks/assumptions that i didn't like, and it's worked fairly well. your experience may have been different, though (from what you've said, it sounds like it has)...and if that's the case, then fair enough. :)
The problem with talking about "isms" in general is that it doesn't deal with the actual isms.
"in a language that doesn't classify them"
The behavior classifies them and it's up to them to decide how to make amends and whether to accept that behavior from themselves in the future. As liviapenn said, euphemisms don't change it.
It depends on the situation and the extent of the behavior. Was it was merely inappropriate? If someone grabbed my chest at a conference, I would not feel the need to be polite about it.
"and doesn't call anyone an '-ist.'
But, as Jonquil said, no one has to be called a racist to assume they're being called a racist. If someone is that willing to make excuses, whether they think they've been called racist or sexist isn't as important as whether they're being one.
I think "Get your f-ing hand off my breast before I rip it off" works, though Connie Willis was far more graceful about it than that. And then the seismm discussion can be held *afterwards* - but at least it's been established that the action was out of bounds.
I see red when people use the word "retard," but still didn't think about a hell of a lot of other just as ableist language I have consistently used until I saw that Dreamwidth discussion about it. So, again, meaning well also means acknowledging a lot of epic fucking up.
Hi, sorry to butt in here, but do you know whereabouts the Dreamwidth discussion could be found? Is it in a community? I would be interested in reading it. I do have a DW account, but am not active over there. Thanks in advance for any help :)
It starts (or at least, I first saw it) here, and there may be some other links in the comment threads. (One of the commenters, not this person, said at their own journal that their head was exploding from having to do all sorts of Ableism 101 recently, so I didn't want to link directly to them and thus possibly haul them back into a conversation they were done with having.)
I just had a mini-version of this: someone posting that they were going to ask for a second ultrasound "cos for a girl, she packs a hell of a punch." I pointed (none too nicely, but I didn't care) out how stupid that was and was told to get off my high horse and " I run triathalons" - aka I could never be SEXIST. HDU! Grow up!
In utero stereotyping based on movements. It makes me weep, and is sexist as hell. Except it couldn't be, of course.
As another white person, I know that I'm programmed (despite my parents' best efforts and a lot of rereading Mildred Taylor novels), and I have an obligation to fight the programming, and apologize when it wins.
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