This has been bugging me for a while, so I thought I'd finally comment on it. When is racism actually racism? If a white person does something to a black person, is it automatically racist? If a straight person does something to a gay person, is that automatically homophobic?
My answer is No! I'm a woman, and I have actually been discriminated against for being female. I have friends, who are black, who have been discriminated against for being black. I even have a friend who was discriminated against for being white! Anyway, I'm not trying to say that racism or sexism or homophobia don't exist. Obviously, they do. But not EVERY single problem is prejudice-related.
I'm going to let you in on a little secret about me now - I'm fat. I tell you this to illustrate a point. You keep seeing "undercover" specials on TV where people put on fat suits and then get discriminated against. And yes, it does happen. But not all of it is because of being fat. A lot of the people putting on the fat suit are famous or beautiful. So they're going to get better than normal treatment from a lot of people. In disguise, they get normal to sub-normal treatment. As a fat person, I can tell you that I have, in fact, faced very little discrimination. Most of it seems to be sub-conscious discrimination from my students. In general, students seem to have more respect for male teachers than for female teachers. Really, ask around your department. If you're also fat, that's just one more strike against you, male or female.
The point I'm trying to make is that, yes, sometimes it is discrimination. But a lot of the time it isn't. Unfortunately, we're so racially aware in our culture that it causes problems. Let me give you two examples:
1) The recent kerfuffle over a sign at a football game. The sign said "You mad bro?" Now, if this had been two all-white teams playing, or two all-black teams playing, no one would care. But as the losing team was mostly black (and I'm guessing the winning team mostly white) there have been accusations of racism. The problem is that "You mad bro?" is a relatively common meme online. And it's not racist. Now, I could see some of the white team finding it "extra fun" because the other team is black. But it's not necessarily racist. The word "bro" isn't only used by people with dark skin.
A few years ago a woman running for office in California was accused of racism, because she used the expression "call a spade a spade." That's a gardening term that has existed for a long time. A spade is a type of shovel. But some people just seem on the lookout for offense. That's next.
2) My Little Pony has a new cartoon series out. I've watched some of it. But I was surprised to find a blog posting ranting about how prejudiced the series is. Here's the original blog post. And here's a rebuttal post from the show's producer (white female). You should read both of them. The original poster (also white female) seems to take a few screen shots of the series, and read an episode description, then decide that the entire series is racist, sexist, homophobic, and anti-smart people. WOW! What an amazingly thorough job! As the rebuttal points out (and my own viewing corroborates) the show is NOT prejudiced. But this is the problem with our society. The original poster wanted it to be prejudiced. Or she just wanted to stir up some shit, without caring about the truth. Both of those are big problems today. And it has to stop. Because there actually are racist people out there. So stop castigating the non-racists. Don't make up shit that distracts us from the real problems.
More tomorrow.
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