I do not seek to militantly fight racism. I simply adduce myself as evidence of its stupidity
My views on race are ones that I think are quite unusual among the panoply of purported solutions for its evils. The history of race is a history of evil and systematic dehumanization. The historical weight of this evil which still looms large and unresolved in our times demands that in the name of moral wisdom and moral utility we relinquish and annihilate entirely all-racial identities and categories.
Racial/ethnic identities are conceptually vacuous and they cognitively hijack and paralyze their users. Because they are conceptually vacuous they create a house of horrors. To wear them is to take on the mantle of an undiagnosed schizophrenia. Objective external reality is displaced and the referent of reality is our distorted internal consciousness. When I say we, I refer to the human race. Racial identities have done plenty of damage to the life of dignity we have been desperately trying to adopt and practice as an indispensable social good since the Enlightenment. The butchery and carnage done in the name of racial/ethnic identities is alive today and is awaiting the spectatorship of all those interested. The numbers continue to rise daily as the collapse of civil society around the globe advances. The collapse occurs ast times in swift apocalyptic blows, and at others in the form of millions of tiny and sometimes not so tiny scratches. One day the mighty tree that is human civilization itself may ultimately fall.
My views on race are ones that I think are quite unusual among the panoply of purported solutions for its evils. The history of race is a history of evil and systematic dehumanization. The historical weight of this evil which still looms large and unresolved in our times demands that in the name of moral wisdom and moral utility we relinquish and annihilate entirely all-racial identities and categories.
Racial/ethnic identities are conceptually vacuous and they cognitively hijack and paralyze their users. Because they are conceptually vacuous they create a house of horrors. To wear them is to take on the mantle of an undiagnosed schizophrenia. Objective external reality is displaced and the referent of reality is our distorted internal consciousness. When I say we, I refer to the human race. Racial identities have done plenty of damage to the life of dignity we have been desperately trying to adopt and practice as an indispensable social good since the Enlightenment. The butchery and carnage done in the name of racial/ethnic identities is alive today and is awaiting the spectatorship of all those interested. The numbers continue to rise daily as the collapse of civil society around the globe advances. The collapse occurs ast times in swift apocalyptic blows, and at others in the form of millions of tiny and sometimes not so tiny scratches. One day the mighty tree that is human civilization itself may ultimately fall.
There are those who will say that the historical weight and burdens of racial evil are not sufficient conditions for relinquishing racial identities. After all, many of the indispensable social goods that we need to matriculate morally and socially in our societies have been derived from our racial identities. This is quite false, however. In the case of the majority of cultures such goods are never derived entirely from racial identities. They are derived from the public sphere of civic and moral values, values whose historical gradations fall way outside any parochial conception of race. Values, for example, which some might think are those of contemporary white people, have their conceptual derivations from individuals who in any real and cultural sense were not white. Aristotle, Voltaire, Plato, Saint Augustine, Thomas Aquinas and René Descartes were not and could not have been white. The racial categories and, indeed, the criteria that are used in contemporary North America to allegedly determine and objectively designate racial ascriptions were non-existent. Such individuals had no conception of themselves as white people. Today those who attempt to assign a racial index to the thoughts and value systems inherited from various historical periods commit egregious anachronisms. A great deal needs to be said about those sorts of cognitive aberrations to the extent that they persist in perpetuating myths about the color of ideas and the corresponding correlation between those ideas and the types of human beings qualified to be their bearers and practitioners. Ideas that take on a racial sheen because their originators have been assigned racial identities based on already dubious criteria are not ideas that will be attractive to people as viable options to adopt for their own emerging and contested identities.
The caveat against relinquishing racial identities because they are the fountainhead of much of our social goods in the form of values, customs and norms and styles is most evidently directed, however, against racial minorities who have been the victims of racial oppression and systematic dehumanization. The caveat is issued against the backdrop of a larger culture that periodically has betrayed its ideals of fairness and justice for all by engaging in specious enterprises of denying persons, based on their racial ascriptions, indispensable recognition and social goods that are part and parcel of moral and social human development. I have written about the political value to be gained by politically identifying with a racial identity as opposed to strong cultural identification. I will reiterate here, however, that anything short of a very skeptical and provisional stance to racial attitudes will defeat any attempt to combat the evils of race and racism.
But the same logic that is applied to defeat the spirit of seriousness that characterizes any racial identity may also be applied to the racial identities of racial minorities. That is, although the socio-historical and contemporary conditions affecting the question of the feasibility and morality of racial minorities holding on to their identities still remain, the conceptual criteria for determining the truth or falsity of racial identities from a biological perspective still holds. Thinkers such as Anthony Appiah and Naomi Zack have already proven in their respective works why race fails as a biological concept. From the socio-cultural perspective, as well, modern North American blacks have more in common with the values of the Enlightenment than they do to any construction of a hermetically sealed pan-African continental identity. Any black identity developed within the linguistic parameters of the English language of the contemporary era with its rights based, dignity bearing, entitlement focused paradigm is a cosmopolitan, hybridized and, therefore, non-racial identity.
The problem of racism is really not a problem of race, but is rather the corollary of its genetic antecedent: tribalism. Racial identity is one variation of this wider phenomenon and all attempts to fight the practical consequences of racism will be stymied until we face the wholesale concept to which it is tied. My purpose here is not to get caught up in a distracting accusation that is often voiced by those skeptical of the project of questioning racial authenticity. The accusation is on the order of: Is it not unfair to demand that blacks and other ethnic or racial minorities be forced to divest themselves of their racial identities when in doing so they leave themselves unprotected and unarmed with the vital resources they need to survive and maintain a sense of dignity in a violently racist society?
Only a blind fool or a pernicious discriminator would deny the persistence of racism and the dire need for strengthening the moral lives of those harmed by it. But to maintain a long and systematic hope for a future devoid of race is to also practice the fundamental requirements needed for seeing that vision realized even in the midst of a social and political reality that leaves that vision unanchored to anything tangible. I remain committed to the view that ultimately strong racial identities lead to a sullying of the soul, largely because of the cognitive distortion which must be kept in place for them to remain alive.
My goal is to address those who, while forced to live racial identities, would prefer not to have their internal lives dictated to by the false beliefs upon which race is predicated. How can I refrain from internalizing the external portrait and constructions of race which bears little resemblance to the deepest sense of who I take myself to be, a sense that too often fails to match up to the external portrait of what a racialized person ought to feel about him or herself? There are, then, those who dare to erect self-identities that are not just impervious in deep structural ways to the societal designs of race, but also defiantly seek to recast them in non-racial terms. The freedom to overthrow the self-image that racial identities force us to adopt is crucial for many reasons. In the first place, it helps us to be aware of how a false sense of autonomy about our adoption and celebration of racial identities beguiles and implicates us in the more specious accoutrements of race.
Let me be specific. Philosopher Cornell West argues that blackness is an ethical identity that functions as a response to modes of systematic oppression. This is conceptually false. It is an inspiring idea and a gallant attempt to recover a concept that all too often has been attributed with brutish, nasty and downright despicable features. But the invocation of a term that has a normative thrust to it is one that also has to satisfy epistemological criteria of all sorts. What exactly are the essential attributes of the term such that it would designate a particular moral status to all those to whom it is applicable? How are the terms of the concept fixed so that those who fail to satisfy both its strict conceptual criteria and its normative criteria fall outside its sphere of applicability? Would a black criminal or a black person who has never experienced racial subjugation and systematic denigration be able to adopt the concept? These questions and the answers they yield point to the absence of strong criteria that would give the concept such a strong identity. They point to the absence of any real currency that blackness as ethical response aims at.
In reality this is the way that all racial identities function. They purport to do a great deal more than they are conceptually able to do. Racial terms are applicable to too many people with too many varied attributes, dispositions and personal characteristics for them to function like rigid designators. Yet, that is exactly how the term blackness aims to function.
Most bearers of racial identities wear them out of faith, a vapid faith whose source is in the socio-cultural baggage that gives the identity its varied meanings. Among the panoply of racial identities that exist in America, black identity is the most derivative. I hasten to caution against a host of criticisms I can well anticipate now. I am well aware of the arguments for the reconstructive work that a certain type of political racial identity can yield. I take it, however, that such proponents would be aware of the spirit of pragmatism and realism that is indexed to the use of the racial term.
For ordinary folks, however, autonomous ownership of the term, and therefore of a crucial part of their self-image and identity is a social good that simply eludes them. When you inherit and uncritically wear and practice a racial identity you are unwittingly implicated in the use of the stereotypes and the being-for-others predicates that accompany the term. Racial oppression and denigration cannot be fought while holding onto to a racial identity because ironically the racial mechanics one holds onto as a way of combating stereotypes, dehumanization and oppression are the inverse of the same mechanics deployed by racists in the subjugation enterprise.
If racial and ethnic identities are such social goods that locate the essence or some core element of the human constitution that have intrinsic value, then why is it that racial, ethnic and national epithets are summoned so quickly to denigrate and insult. No one would actually say, “you damn moral person, “you lawyer,” “you stupid ethical cosmopolitan.” Oh, the statements could be said but their utterances lack the force to insult and dehumanize, because as concepts they could not wound the way those who yelled them would like. But tribal invectives do wound and do harm and if they had intrinsic value they could simply not function that way. One could feel no psychological harm or the sense of being insulted as a result of being harangued by them.
It is true that quite often tribal affiliations are used neutrally, as mere descriptive terms. All such usage, however, betray a deeper emotional and structural component to the term. Even the most innocent and seemingly non-controversial individual use of tribal terms are parasitic on larger social and cultural senses of them. One could say that this is true of how ordinary language functions. What makes neutral usage of tribal terms problematic is that one’s individual usage is really less individualistic that one thinks. One has less ownership of them than one is inclined to believe for the simple reason, that say unlike a term such as father, or friend, one is less able trans value tribal terms by investing them with personal attributes of one’s own. No matter how much you think you are subverting tribal terms with assemblages of your own, their transformative status will lack any real social currency. In other words, it not likely to alter in any real sense, the stereotypes and social/cultural understanding people will have of the terms. Unlike other terms which have very strong conceptual attributes which give the terms their identity regardless of ttheir social utility or public cognizance, tribal designators gain their formal identities from social and political orchestrations which is one reason why they are often arbitrary and either too broad or narrow as designators.
Tribal identities, I would argue, are inherently problematic, divisive and repugnant. Let us ask ourselves why we feel so sullied and strange when others treat us like we are them and also why we feel faceless, contentless when they treat us like we are not them. I reject the answer that such feelings are simply reinforced by an historical consciousness, by memories of injuries and thoughts of impurities of those who seek access to our being by use of them. Racial/ethnic bearers wear confusing, arbitrary and conceptually vacuous terms and so they will undoubtedly become cognitively confused. To live in a conceptual asylum is to live within the confines of conceptual inanities whose metaphysical roots you have not at all examined. Autonomy is lost when self-reflectivity is criminalized or, not to be so extreme---when it becomes a social pastime whose indulgence leaves you socially handicapped. After all, the chocolate addict who spends hours in the gourmet shop thinks he is free because he has the ability to choose among so many varieties.
My theses are directed not at those who are convinced of the indispensable value of tribal identities. I can no more convince them of my view than I can someone who believes in winged horses, elks and boogie monsters. I am interested in those who wish to begin the process of depathologizing the self and of recovering wholesome agency. It is your birthright and proper estate and it is not possible if your deepest moral core is contaminated with the pollutants of tribalism. This is not just a re-socialization of the self resulting from occupying the platform of a moral rehabilitationist. This is a question of entirely uprooting the false metaphysics of race and the havoc it has wreaked in the souls of human beings. It is time to get out of the madhouse, to stop practicing madness while accusing others of harming you by their madness. This is a question of thinking long term and of holding on to an unshakeable sense of the future and of reason.
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wendyo
Kevin Abel
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Comments
Tolerance, however, is a possibility.
I'm your color. I was at the pool with a woman from Guam. Her husband said "Oh look! Ebony and Ivory!".
Both she and her husband are my exact color. I told this idiot: "Look, she's not Ivory and I'm not Ebony! Do you two ever look at yourselves in your mirror? You're both my color!
And Ya ain't no ivory!"
Since they came to America, they classified themselves as "White", and therefore superior to everyone else of color. And they won't shut up about it.
As long as we have idiots like this, we're never going to be a color blind society. Fortunately, they're retired and their kids are grown. So they can no longer bring their idiotic mess to the workplace or the school.
It's like that episode of "Star Trek". Two battling civilizations. Both look identical. One side of the face is Black. One side is white.
It turns out that the battle depended on which side of the face was which. Some had black on the left. Others had black on the right.
Sigh.
But I am so encouraged by the progress that your generation is making. Your generation is doing much better, not having so much bitter and terrible experience. You don't have as much ignorance and distrust.
So, it's YOUR battle. We paved the roads, so that you could travel to some better endeavors.
And now it's your time to make another leap in our growth as human beings, while we retire to putter around in our gardens and mumble to ourselves.
One thing, though. I wish that your generation would attack an even greater burden: The horrific drug plague that is destroying your lives.
While we fought the racism, you have to fight the monkey on the backs, or a racially blind society won't matter.
If the media and law were blind, it would help, but you can't tell people to erase their past.
A word to JimGalt...
In reference to "Aristocrats or Arkansas"...my maternal line of greatgrandparents lived many years in Arkansas , having fled the Kentucky hills.... yes, a crazed family feud of sorts complete with guns and death threats, then raised children in West Texas and finally moved to Arkansas to grow a huge vegetable garden and raise chickens and a piglet or two during the depression...my greatgrandfather was a preacher, had been a school teacher when they met, but that's another story...they were dark...they were "mixed race"...no one talked about it... English, Jewish, French- Canadian- on -the -way- to- Louisiana-blood (which had native American tossed in ) and Cherokee from Kentucky for good measure...but my grandmother had been taunted and again and again called "darkie" by not just classmates in West Texas but by the teachers! My greatgrandfather then started teaching them at home which was a boost to their literacy and general knowlege to tell the truth...as for "aristocracy" they were descendents of people who went into Kentucky before the Constitution ...people with ancient superstitions from Druidic England it appears, ( I have traced some of the specific beliefs and tales) who also had songs I can recall both my greatgrandmother and grandmother singing about"lords riding on horses" and "ladies".....why those songs?
.....they also knew how to make healing salves ( ointments) from roots and such.... talked to plants and animals before it became "fashion".....please discard the Arkansas generalizations...I will never forget the look on a dermatologist's face when he saw the keloids on my arm, wrist and chin...."Caucasians don't keloid" he said as he stared into my grey-blue eyes....then I told him of my AMERICAN family ...seemed odd for a doctor not to be aware of phenotypes and genotypes and the difference...I suspect there are millions and millions of others like myself, who may "look" sort of one way (phenotype) but are a wonderful blend of many ethnicities....instinctively, in our core, we recognize one another and see beyond some superficiality...that is my hope and prayer for this new century....
Even back then, this was forty or more years ago, I would bristle and say "American"...I knew it was a reference to "race" and was offended not by the curiosity but by the round about way of getting an answer...the questioner was usually quite young or uneducated in any event.
I prefer the term "heritage" or "ethnicity" but I am , obviously, not a scholar nor up on the latest findings and terminology....
In a family of many shades of tan , olive and beige and pink, with tell-tale "features" , a very full mouth here, extra curly hair there, native American noses everywhere, or are those Jewish noses, wispy English hair, Celtic freckles , thick, heavy Cherokee hair, some of it blonde and some of it near black, keloids on everybody, dark brown eyes, blue and grey and hazel eyes, diabetes on everyone's "to watch for" list, alcoholism touching down to assault a few, lactose intolerence, an rare blood type (outside of Asia) we are all aware of our blessing of being mixed and yet we have, as our grandparents before us, always checked the "white" box when asked...if someone checks "native American" then there is the need to identitify in which tribe membership is held...of course there is none now...have we reaped benefit from being considered "white" ?most certainly.....but the interesting thing is how the generation of those in our extended family born in the 70's and 80's are marrying "non-whites"...so my parents greatgrandchildren are even MORE mixed with Mexican, Indigenous, Japanese, "Portuguese"
heritage added in! That's what I consider AMERICAN...and while "melting pot" was a misnomer, "stew" is apt and fitting...what a delicious recipe! I have hope for this counrty at least because of our propensity for mixing it all up...
I honestly don't think, literally, that enough of us old farts have died yet for your thesis to be accepted. But I have told you before that someone needs to pioneer the next generation's new thinking on how the American stew needs to self identify is further progress is to be made in that touchy issue of "who am I in this society at this time and place in history?"
I remember not long ago when I wrote an OS piece called "Obama: America's First Black President; or Our 44th White President." The argument was simple. He had a black father and a white mother. Why didn't I have an equal right to "claim him as one of my own" as anybody else? The comments were all against my claim, as I expected. In some ways I wish that the President didn't have that hunger when he was younger to self identify as some tribal thing and chose to identify as black. I fully understand the need but in fulfilling it we were unknowingly denied to have our first post-racial President.
I love the way your mind works and I could read you for hours. It would help an old man, though, if you would break up your paragraphs a lot more. My old eyes do not track densely packed words like they used to.
Monte
My friend is very light skinned. Both of his parents are black. So he's not "interracial", etc... We were having lunch and saw a guy that we went to college with. Obama came into the the subject matter. This guy was (or said he was) Pro-Obama, perhaps it was just because D and I are such blatant fans. The discussion of him being the first "Black President" was brought up by this guy/idiot.
He looked at D and said, "By the way, I've always wondered, what race are you?" D looked as serious as could be and said "the human race." The old adage, you could hear a pin drop. The guy turned pale, and then D and I burst out with laughter. We have had this discussion before and determined there is only one race, the human race. The guy forced a laugh, but you could tell it resonated in his narrow mind.
(rated)
The comment about "English poor white trash" was jarring but spot on...the eye of the beholder is important in that estimation however..
My mother and grandmother always spoke against "white trash".... it was a pujurative used to describe lazy, shiftless, "do nothings" who would not work, or worked as minimally as possible, who were not clean or who spoke incorrect English...the proper speaking of our language always played a big role in our upbringing... we were to act and behave, to BE "refined".....as well as being well read and knowing classics, Scripture memorization, studying and reading for pleasure Shakespeare, memorizing poems, etc. Many books were in the homes of my greatgrandfather, grandmother and parents...that is a heritage and tradition for which I am most grateful.
READING was almost our religion , indeed, because the Bible was paramount in the home, reading was an integral part of our faith... My own mother learned to read at age four, as did I, my son at three and a half and my grandchildren at four also..Graduating from high school was expected and required, graduating college hoped for...piano lessons were provided..trips to museums and concerts sprinkled throughout a childhood. Cleanliness was an imperative...it was a near fetish for my grandmother...years living in poverty after her parents had escaped to Texas were her reasons...taunts from others about her dusky skin another I am certain.
The people of English descent who went into Kentucky with Boone and other wilderness western adventurers, for at that time Kentucky and Ohio were indeed the west! were not trashy..they were brave men and women, strong and courageous and skilled in many areas, they brought talents and abilities with them way back then into a literal wilderness the wildness of which we can not imagine...resentful and fearful savages were in those hills and mountains..I am descended from those native Americans also, so I feel entitled to say that...they viciously and murderously attacked the settlements of the encroaching English and the French aided and encouraged them....another story , one having to do with Rome , with European hostilities, not race...the early Kentuckians had educated people, teachers and preachers, among those settlers too, as well as weavers, carpenters, wheel wrights, blacksmiths, glaziers, all were farmers, most knew how to play some sort of musical instrument...the long decades of isolation and distance even from one another in the valleys and hollows of those hills and mountains gave way to the stereotypes we know today of inbred, ignorant, strange talking (old Elizabethan phrases and terms) semi-primitive "hillbillies"......an ethnic slur if ever there was one.
However, Latinos in Arkansas and especially in the Northwest part of our state have faced a massive amount of discrimination and we have to fight to make sure that Arkansas, the South, and our nation don't fall into the same traps we've fallen into before regarding race and ethnicity, the same traps that blacks in Arkansas and our country face every day. That fight, and it is a fight, involves advocacy on behalf of those being discriminated against because dreadful attitudes and ignorance concerning ethnicity and race are still with us and have to be confronted. What other means is there but for those facing discrimination to band together to fight it and utilize our laws to do so? I don't disagree with your theory and do believe we need to recognize that all our poor are discriminated against, but while I hope we someday arrive at a color-blind society, we're simply not there yet.
And again, avoid the cheap jabs and stereotypes.