“Look, but she is gonna get—you know, I don’t want her stinkin’ Muslim crap in my country,” Roseanna said. “Sharia law,” Amy chimed in. Her iridescent CoverGirl highlighter glinted under the stadium lights. “Sharia law.” “That’s not America,” Roseanna said. “She is a Muslim through and through …She wants that all here.” She wondered aloud whether Omar had come to the U.S. illegally. (There is no evidence this is true.) "I'm not racist, but..." does not an effective argument make. "I won't join in the chant, but I don't want her stinkin' Muslim crap in my country." Didn't she just? I appreciate the shades of nuance between racism and nationalism and xenophobia. Does she? Does it matter? This is a constellation of worldviews that all draw their power from hate and fear. All of them can be weaponized, and all of them have. So what if calling this racism shuts down argument? Some arguments don't merit serious discussion.She then shared her thoughts on the chant’s target, Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, who came to America as a refugee from Somalia.
I know it's bad form, but I didn't read the article, these things make me feel stupider. I am trying to use Roseanna and Amy as props to make a point, also bad form. Here's my proposition: can you imagine that a person exists who believes that Sharia law is a poor fit for the United States? I can picture Roseanna and Amy scrolling down to the "debates and controversies" section to see maps of blasphemy laws (Australia has "subnational restrictions"; Somalia has "death sentences") or apostacy or homosexual relationships and expression and getting concerned. More likely, someone put something more inflammatory than a map in their Facebook slow drip of outrage, but let's try to be charitable and imagine, somewhere, an objective person trying to learn. If you can imagine a person who is concerned about the idea of Sharia law in the United States, is it necessary that they be racist? Is it possible to be concerned about the laws and values, without having a negative opinion of the people who live in (or come from) places where those laws and values are common? If so, what would that person look like, how would they talk? Racism is such a powerful pejorative, as it should be, that true racists are likely to take cover behind "cultural conservatism" and claim that they're only in it for the values, not the hatred. When someone says "I'm not a racist, but..." I agree it doesn't sound convincing because no one wants to be smeared with the label. But what is the objective person supposed to say? Clearly they should focus their negative language on the laws and values they find concerning, and refrain from criticizing people. If someone speaks that way, I can't be sure of their true motivations, but I would want to explore their position on laws and values rather than focusing on the incendiary and speculative subject of motivation.
Apologies for the delayed response- I spent almost all of yesterday driving. I think the issue I hold with the above thought experiment is that you've managed at once to overly narrow and broaden the subject of the discussion to a point at which the original subject matter gets lost in the shuffle. We're no longer talking about racism versus nationalism versus xenophobia, we're talking about the merits and pitfalls of Sharia law- essentially a policy discussion. And we can argue the benefits and pitfalls of Sharia, but it's a little like listening to somebody complain about the Jews' conspiracy to control world media and then say, "let's dig into that, though; would a worldwide monopoly on the media really benefit us as a polity?" Reading Roseanna and Amy's comments as charitably as you have for a moment, I'll discard nearly every other portion of the original quote; I'll ignore the part about "stinkin' Muslim crap" and "Muslim through and through" and "that's not America" and the speculation of whether or not this Somali immigrant-cum-stateswoman is here legally, and focus solely, as you'd have it, on her passing reference to Sharia. We then have to examine where she got this "Sharia" notion. Is there anything in Omar's voting record that indicates an affinity towards Sharia law? Have Rosanna and Amy studied Sharia? Do they even know what it means? In order to have the discussion you want, we have to take it as a matter of course that when they say "all that Muslim crap," they only take issue with the specter of Sharia, and that they are coming to the discussion with a viewpoint as informed as your own vis-a-vis apostasy, vis-a-vis state response to homosexuality, vis-a-vis capital and corporal punishment, etc. Furthermore, we have to grant that they care to recognize that "Sharia" only encompasses one practical portion of a fundamentalist minority of the world's second largest religion with a history spanning several millennia. But ultimately, to do so would be absurd. I think you and I can agree without too much controversy that in the above case, "Sharia" is shorthand. It's a condensation of a rich and broad culture into a bogeyman signifier. Look, here's Islam: And here's Islam: And here it is again: So why is it that in these discussions we always have to approach it from the terms of this and this and this? You opened the discussion searching for a working definition of racism. I'd say that when person A narrows the culture, religion, and physical characteristics of person B down to the basest caricature, and then rejects person B based on that caricature, that's as good a definition of racism as one might need. So, then. If it's not too hypocritical (I'll leave that up to your good judgment), I'd argue a sort of like-for-like. If someone is comfortable simplifying my cultural standpoint down to a cartoonish shorthand, I'm comfortable discarding the finer distinctions between xenophobia, racism and nationalism in favor of a catch-all term, in this case racism. The problem with ten-dollar words is that they have a way of sterilizing subject matter. As a for instance, "nationalism" has recently been re-introduced into the American lexicon as a non-pejorative. If we call all of what was discussed above "ethno-nationalism" rather than "racism," isn't it entirely possible that we might then inadvertently deem such behavior acceptable? Better to err on the side here of stigma rather than normalization, I think. Racism is a fine word for it. For all that, though, your point is well taken. We could be only a little less charitable to the above actors and assume that their issue with Rep. Omar has nothing to do with the color of her skin in conjunction with her cultural background, and only has to do with her religion. When John F. Kennedy ascended to the presidency, there were those who vocally decried his "Papist" affinities and wondered whether the Vatican would now run the White House. This isn't a perfect analog for our current discussion, but it subtracts the thornier issues of phenotype. In which case, "racism" wouldn't exactly fit the bill, would it? Taken in this light, I can respect your original point. I ask you, then, to reconsider mine. Whether or not the dumbing-down of a religious or cultural group to base signifiers, and then ascribing nefarious motives to this simplified Other is racist or xenophobic or ethno-nationalist becomes extraneous. It all merits an unequivocal condemnation.
It all comes down to denigrating someone for what they are, not for what they do. Unfortunately, our definition of 'race' has long been inexact so our definition of 'racism' is nebulous as a consequence. Am I "jewish?" According to the Law of Return I'm jewish, regardless of the fact that my grandmother disavowed her faith. Her husband's family were DAR. I have a great uncle that traced the other side of the family clear back to Old 300 so by any reasonable definition, I'm the most White Anglo Saxon Protestant American I know. Yet by Hitler's standards me and Sammy Davis Jr would both be lampshade fodder. Except we all know that isn't true. I'd be fuckin' fine because I'm as Aryan a specimen as any Ubermensch could hope for. And Sammy Davis Jr would have been fucked regardless of who he prayed to. Because it's not about definitions, is it. It's about hatred. It's about short-circuiting your decision-making process when it comes to others because your life is easier to get through if you know who your enemies are. You mentioned Potter Stewart earlier. Something people forget about Potter Stewart is that he wasn't arguing what pornography was, he was arguing what pornography wasn't: People forget that 20 years later the Supreme Court actually did come up with a definition of pornography: 2. whether the work depicts or describes, in an offensive way, sexual conduct or excretory functions, as specifically defined by applicable state law (the syllabus of the case mentions only sexual conduct, but excretory functions are explicitly mentioned on page 25 of the majority opinion); and 3. whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value. That, of course, led to predictable amounts of margin-sniping: Which, of course, leads to people arguing about what "community" is and eventually having whole sections of laws struck down because fuckin' hell, it's a violation of first amendment rights. And here we are. Progressing. With a finely refined test for what "obscenity" is and a growing consensus that we can't constitutionally do anything about it. Aryan. Know what that used to mean? Kinda weird that a bunch of racist Germans wanted nothing more in the world than to be Persian. Except of course they didn't, they'd just managed to erroneously think that whatever language they spoke obviously had roots older than anything else and since they were demonstrably superior that meant that they laid claim to it despite the fact that it meant they were expressing racial kinship with this guy: Because really? Racists care fuckall about the precision of their racism except as it allows them to claim to not be racist. It's useful, though, to be dragged into arguments about the definition of racism, the boundaries of racism, the contraindicators of racism and the exceptions of racism if it in any way keeps us from making racists uncomfortable about their racism. To which I say fuck that shit. I'd say that when person A narrows the culture, religion, and physical characteristics of person B down to the basest caricature, and then rejects person B based on that caricature, that's as good a definition of racism as one might need.
I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.
1. whether the average person, applying contemporary "community standards", would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest;
A companion case to Miller, Paris Adult Theatre I v. Slaton, provided states with greater leeway to shut down adult movie houses. Controversy arose over Miller's "community standards" analysis, with critics charging that Miller encouraged forum shopping to prosecute national producers of what some believe to be "obscenity" in locales where community standards differ substantially from the rest of the nation. For example, under the "community standards" prong of the Miller test, what might be considered "obscene" in Massachusetts might not be considered "obscene" in Utah, or the opposite might be true; in any event, prosecutors tend to bring charges in locales where they believe that they will prevail. Justice Brennan, author of the Roth opinion, argued in his dissent for Paris Adult Theatre that outright suppression of obscenity is too vague to enforce in line with the First and Fourteenth Amendments.
Often in rhetorical discourse, here or anywhere else, I eventually reach a point where all I can think of is semantic satiation- that phenomenon where if you say a certain word enough times, it loses all meaning. That's the problem with applying Socratic dialogue to any situation that isn't an ancient Greek drinking party. It doesn't really get you anywhere but your navel. "What is racism? But what is race? What is prejudice? What is ill intent? What is bad about being afraid of a bad thing? What is a bad thing? What is thing?" Don't get me wrong, I appreciate it here; it's one of the reasons (besides true-blue human connection) I didn't ghost this account ages ago. But when applied to real life- say, legal theory or whether or not one should feel bad about denigrating Muslims, or whether or not one should feel bad about denigrating those who denigrate Muslims- such discourse too frequently turns into a sort of real-world moral Gerrymandering. I can't be racist, because I have mixed race grandchildren, and I won't engage in this one clearly proscribed activity that has been narrowly defined as racist. I can't be racist, because although I gormlessly equate Islam with Jihad and Sharia, those are objectively bad things and everybody should fear them. Maybe I've said some racist things in the past, and yesterday, and right now, but that doesn't make me racist, it just makes me terminally misinformed. Or maybe they're not racist things at all; after all, what is racism? If treated cavalierly, the Socratic method can metastasize into moral relativism like that; most people out and about probably couldn't discern an appreciable difference between the two. Again, none of this is to discourage the type of discussion engaged in above. It's just a caveat. Words and ideas have power. It's our duty in a free society to examine our words and ideas. It's a privilege to do it here with people who are a) super smart and b) don't necessarily agree with one another. As we move back down the gradient, however, from the rhetorical to the practical, it's kind of on everyone to make sure we all know the difference. Otherwise, an idea that's bandied about only in academic circles might slip into a news cycle, and then condensed to a hamfisted tweet by a ham-fingered head of state, and then get repeated until we're no longer sure whether nativism is something to be avoided. Or it could slip into the canon of fringe elements, and then get repeated and further distorted on 8chan, and then somebody decides that Mexicans pose a great enough danger to our country that they need to be exterminated, Walmart by Walmart. When the dust has settled, bad things are bad, and they should be addressed as such. I'm not calling Roseanna and Amy racists to change their mind; they're a sunk cost. I'm calling them racist to reinforce a very useful societal norm, and to make sure that racism stays unacceptable, and that successive generations don't forget what everybody has already been through, and to fight the troubling resurgence of white nationalism. edit as an aside, that patch is incredible.Am I "jewish?" According to the Law of Return I'm jewish, regardless of the fact that my grandmother disavowed her faith. Her husband's family were DAR. I have a great uncle that traced the other side of the family clear back to Old 300 so by any reasonable definition, I'm the most White Anglo Saxon Protestant American I know. Yet by Hitler's standards me and Sammy Davis Jr would both be lampshade fodder.
[...]People forget that 20 years later the Supreme Court actually did come up with a definition of pornography [...]That, of course, led to predictable amounts of margin-sniping [...]Which, of course, leads to people arguing about what "community" is and eventually having whole sections of laws struck down because fuckin' hell, it's a violation of first amendment rights.
Language is a handle we use to manipulate concepts. The definition of the thing is the thing so if you can challenge what the word means, you can challenge what the thing it describes is. Language also evolves, where as "things" do not. As a society we change who we are by changing how we talk about stuff. And that, in my opinion, is where the conflict comes. By the old standards of racism, angry MAGAmen weren't racist. By the new standards of racism, angry MAGAmen are racist. The battle must be about how we define racism. I saw an amusing tweet yesterday: I grew up while Reagan was calling the USSR the Evil Empire and TV was full of Red Dawn and The Day After but we never did any missile drills. We all knew that we'd die in a fireball as soon as Ronnie lost his patience but we also knew there was fuckall we could do about it. I did four quarters of community college and three active shooter drills, one in which we had professors play-acting as homicidal maniacs. And I mean, I hid in a machine shop where other students were actively making gun parts. For now? "gun control" means "libs gonna take all my toys." But as soon as someone cracks through to "we're going to let you earn your machine gun instead of letting every dumb fuck have one" that shit's gonna turn on a dime. The definition of "gun control" is currently nebulous. As soon as it ceases to be it's all gonna change. LIkewise, the definition of "domestic terrorism" is experiencing a revision this weekend, and a long overdue one. And here we are, arguing about the definition of "racism" because it's abundantly clear that the old definition is now harmful. Roseanna and Amy didn't used to be racists. That's the core problem. Used to be it was known to Roseanna, Amy and all their friends that camel drivers were subhuman but a gracious citizen would extend them the rights of humanity as if they'd earned it because we're a compassionate people. Now? Now there's a gay Persian hairdresser with seven vowels in his name running for city council (and you're goddamn right I voted for him in the primary). Growing up? The popular bumper sticker around town was an angry Arab caricature with a fuel gage for a mouth and the slogan "send the Marines for more oil NOW". It appears, however, that it never even made it onto the internet. Thirty years ago, this clip was in a major summer blockbuster that made $330m worldwide: Theaters full of people laughing uproariously over the public shaming of a (damn hot) transgender woman. Seven years later we all kinda agreed that AIDS wasn't gay cancer as we watched Philadelphia. Five years after that we all kinda agreed that beating gay kids to death wasn't funny anymore as we all learned about Matthew Shepard. But every step of the way we had to redefine hatred and prejudice and if you were in high school when it was okay to laugh at Crocodile Dundee? You aren't yet 50. I'd rather avoid it. But "racist grandma" is a trope. On the plus side we're changing fast enough that "racist grandma" is probably still in the workforce. On the minus side "racist grandma" votes a hell of a lot more often than the grandkids. "What is racism? But what is race? What is prejudice? What is ill intent? What is bad about being afraid of a bad thing? What is a bad thing? What is thing?"
You think it’s hot now, @NRA@ wait until an entire generation of kids traumatized with active shooter drills since they were TODDLERS turn 18 and get decide what to do about Daddy’s gun humping.
I'm not calling Roseanna and Amy racists to change their mind; they're a sunk cost. I'm calling them racist to reinforce a very useful societal norm, and to make sure that racism stays unacceptable, and that successive generations don't forget what everybody has already been through, and to fight the troubling resurgence of white nationalism.
Your points are well-expressed and well-taken. I think we can agree that Roseanna and Amy are probably uninformed about Islam (compared to you, perhaps not compared to the typical voter). They have never heard of Robert Crane or Hergé. They would be aghast at the suggestion that Arabic numerals be taught in public school. There's a good chance they have never voyaged outside the country. So it is indeed unfair of them to smear a world religion based on the single point that some adherents support Sharia law, without even asking if Ilhan Omar has a driver's license. I think they (and we) should ask whether Rep. Omar in her role as a lawmaker advocates policies that would make us say "that's not America." That works for me. Do Roseanna and Amy reject Ilhan Omar? They declined to chant "send her back" but only because Trump "apologized for that." Perhaps I am splitting hairs when I see a difference between the offensively rude "I don’t want her stinkin’ Muslim crap in my country" and "I don’t want her in my country." I offered Dr. Oz as an example of a Muslim I can imagine Roseanna and Amy fully embracing. Appearances probably explain some of his success. I'm not comfortable trying to peer into Roseanna's mind to estimate how much the lack of melanin on Dr. Oz versus the lack of a hijab on Lisa Oz factors into Roseanna's opinion. It is undeniable that the word "racist" riles people up. I was astonished to hear Roseanna say Trump apologized. I had to read news again to get the story. It seems clear to me that Trump is using the issue to great advantage. He doesn't have to hint at any connection between being black and rats in the city you represent; the outrage machine connects the dots for him, and reverse outrage redounds in his favor. This is a lot of analysis of some low-value comments from Roseanna and Amy. I want to give them the benefit of the doubt, take their words at face value, and entertain the possibility that their primary motivation is to protect what they perceive as valuable cultural norms, because when another Amy speaks eloquently, without crude language, carefully pointing out the difficulty and awkwardness of speaking in favor of a culture when most people outside that culture happen to be "non-white," the response is even more hostile.I'd say that when person A narrows the culture, religion, and physical characteristics of person B down to the basest caricature, and then rejects person B based on that caricature, that's as good a definition of racism as one might need.
“I’m sick to death of it. I have 13 grandchildren—13,” she continued. “Four of them are biracial, black and white; another two of them are black and white; and another two of them are Singapore and white. You think I’m a racist? I go and I give them kids kisses like nobody’s business.”
“He didn’t say nothing about the color of somebody’s skin,” Roseanna said.
You put forth this marvelous, elaborate thought experiment whereby Rosanna and Amy cruise the religious controversies of worldwide blasphemy laws but leave no room for the possibility of googling Ilhan Omar. The prejudice you're hiding is the assumption that anyone from Somalia supports Sharia law. Ilhan Omar fled Somalia at 6 in 1986. Her grandfather was a minister in the Somali Democratic Republic, the country that collapsed into Blackhawk Down. She spent four years in a refugee camp in Kenya before coming to the US where she got involved in student government and education before she sat for her citizenship test at 17. She's never not had a professional position about female empowerment. But because she wears a hijab we immediately start talking about Sharia law and its applicability to the United States. It's not racist to assert that anyone who wears a hijab wants to spread Sharia law, regardless of the utter lack of evidence supporting that position. It's uneducated and prejudicial, sure but not demonstrably racist. What's racist is not assuming the same of Cat Stevens or Ellen Burstyn.