![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
browngirlOkay, so that resolve to take a break from politics... didn't last. There's just too much going on, such as this.
http://blog.kamens.us/2013/07/16/on-the-rationality-and-wrong-of-racism/
Many people like to think that racism is just about fulminant epithet-spewing, but so often what we are up against are the calm reasonable-sounding people who think they can explain why we should sit down and shut up and accept that we are subhuman (in their estimation).
It's almost amusing to read such logic as "Suppose you are a shopkeeper, and your shop keeps getting robbed, and four of the last five robbers were young black men. It is entirely rational for you to decide that you don’t want to allow young black men in your store anymore." [Emphasis the author's.] I could respond that no one would, after being robbed by five young White men in a row, decide to ban young White men from their store, but really, what strikes me is that the option would not even be conceived of let alone rejected. White people, being the default/unmarked group, are not seen as responsible for each other's actions and likely to all behave alike the way that people in marked groups, such as Black people, are.
[I've lived this, btw -- oh, the memories of getting followed around in stores by clerks during my teens and early twenties.]
The thing is, Mr. Kamens isn't the first/fiftieth/five hundredth person I've seen say this. I'm not annoyed that one man said it, so much as I troubled by how many agree with him and think this is perfect unimpeachable logic (and by the impact that belief of theirs will have on the lives of their Black fellow citizens).
http://blog.kamens.us/2013/07/16/on-the-rationality-and-wrong-of-racism/
Many people like to think that racism is just about fulminant epithet-spewing, but so often what we are up against are the calm reasonable-sounding people who think they can explain why we should sit down and shut up and accept that we are subhuman (in their estimation).
It's almost amusing to read such logic as "Suppose you are a shopkeeper, and your shop keeps getting robbed, and four of the last five robbers were young black men. It is entirely rational for you to decide that you don’t want to allow young black men in your store anymore." [Emphasis the author's.] I could respond that no one would, after being robbed by five young White men in a row, decide to ban young White men from their store, but really, what strikes me is that the option would not even be conceived of let alone rejected. White people, being the default/unmarked group, are not seen as responsible for each other's actions and likely to all behave alike the way that people in marked groups, such as Black people, are.
[I've lived this, btw -- oh, the memories of getting followed around in stores by clerks during my teens and early twenties.]
The thing is, Mr. Kamens isn't the first/fiftieth/five hundredth person I've seen say this. I'm not annoyed that one man said it, so much as I troubled by how many agree with him and think this is perfect unimpeachable logic (and by the impact that belief of theirs will have on the lives of their Black fellow citizens).
