Letters to the Editor
JM Walker
Published Letters: 205 Editor's Choice: 4
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Nuttshell
[Read the article: King Kaufman's Sports Daily]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]According to the Free Online Dictionary a racist is defined as based on racial intolerance; "racist remarks". The definition also included characteristic of race or races or arising from differences among groups; "racial differences"; "racial discrimination". Since non-black people do not have kinky or "nappy" hair calling someone a "nappy-headed ho" is a racist slur intended to put someone down for a characteristic they were born with and that sets them apart from the majority.
Here's an exercise. Do a Google search for books on race/racism. There are entire college courses taught on the subject. The amount of literature written on the topic is dumbfounding. So if the extent of the thought you've given to racism and what it means to be racist stops at a dictionary definition, then I suggest you give it some more thought.
For example, "nappy headed," because it originated in the black community, might be considered racial language (i.e., exclusively used to describe black people, most commonly by black people), but how is it racist? I see racism as a worldview. Words themselves don't contain meaning. Human beings invest them with meaning. Language becomes racist when it is spoken in hatred by racist people. Words alone don't make someone a racist. What you cite is an example of lazy, lazy parsing, and it doesn't help the situation. If any racialized language is de facto racist language, then we're all fucked.
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Deering
[Read the article: King Kaufman's Sports Daily]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Some poor schlub wrote:
I'm not going to bother getting into the details about this incident. I have never had a racist bone in my body, was never raised around that kind of belief, and have many black friends and co-workers.
To which deering replied:
S'yeah, right. Whenever someone claims that they have a lot of black friends, you can bet some racist-in-denial nonsense is sure to follow.
Which is interesting to me, because in a different letter thread for a related column, you wrote, in response to one of my letters:
Yeesh. Do you _know_ any black people?
To which I replied:
That depends. If I say yes will I expose myself to snotty insinuations of closet racism or ignorance of a "methinks thou protest too much" variety? If so, then no, I've never met a black person.
This response shut down any accompanying, unfounded slander of racism (see the link to my other letters for the full exchange).
So, Poor Schlub, I feel for you, I do. You walked right into a rhetorical trap that ignorant race-baiters, such as deering, take enormous pride in springing on the sincere and earnest who choose their words unwisely.
For future reference, the correct answer to the question "Do you even know any black people?" is "No, I've only seen them on TV."
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Ktwdawg
[Read the article: Who gets to use the N word?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Exactly how did the Marketing People know this? What/who is the mechanism here? Is is it an 'unspoken rule' of the Bookstore Industry? Some kind of Federal regulation?
Authors rarely have much control over the titles of their work unless it's specifically written into their contract with the publisher. The author can suggest a title and editors can offer refinements, but the marketing people always get the final word, because they're the ones responsible for sales strategy, and titles are integral to that.
I imagine the logic was that "A Short History of Racism" made the book seem more academic and less popular than they wanted, and they were afraid sales would suffer. Marketers love provocative titles, because they catch the eye and hold one's attention better than the mundane. Seems common sense, but you'd be surprised. A racially charged title combined with a subtitle that, by implication, excludes a group of people is pretty provocative and pretty slick marketing.
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tanmack
[Read the article: Who gets to use the N word?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]tanmack wrote:
I don't believe whites can ever use these terms in a racist-free manner. I believe white people are racist, some more than others. Yes, all white people. I don't believe there are any white people who are not racist to some degree. Is this a shocking statement? Is it false? Are there any white people posting on this board who truly believe they are not--to some degree--racist?
It's not terribly shocking, actually. I'd wager it's a common sentiment among blacks in our country.
The fundamental problem of discussions of racism is a lack of agreement on the meaning of the word. Contrary to what your dictionary tells you, there is no standard definition of racism. So I can't honestly answer your question without knowing how you define it. I can, however, answer it based on how I define it. To me, racism is a worldview that posits the superiority of a group over another based solely on skin color. By that standard, I'm pretty sure I'm not racist. Not even a little.
We have to learn to make the distinction between racial language and racist language.
A racist worldview isn't something people are born with. It's something they acquire. It's something they learn. When I was very young, my father taught me that skin color is superficial, and that I should judge others not by their appearances but by their words and their actions. I didn't understand the rational as a child, but I remembered the words. I thought about them as I aged, and, as I matured and gained experience interacting with people of different races, I decided for myself that he was right and what he said was true.
I find your point of view terribly disheartening. I mean no offense by this. I do wonder, however, if you are a parent, what you have taught your children. If I meet them in a bookstore or a ball game, will they distrust me by default based on the color of my skin? Will they judge me not by my words and actions but by some preconceived racial absolute?