I’m also a minority (Native). I’m also undecided where I fully stand on this issue. I’ve read white people on forums say that derogatory words like “cracker, honkie” etc, don’t offend them and they just laugh them off, implying that everyone should just laugh racial slurs off. However, is there really a history of negative connotations to those words? I mean, I can only think of George Jefferson. Redneck, however, I think is more hard-hitting, because it implies an issue of status and education. There is history with the word “redneck” although how hard-hitting I’m not entirely sure. I’ve also noticed “wigger” is “race-traitor” or “nigger-lover” — only modernized.

This next point is where I stray from many other people. The terms “Uncle Tom” “Apple” “Banana” “Oreo” and others are offensive to me. They suggest a race should be a certain way and that going against the grain of your ethnic culture is some great sin and you are deemed a traitor. Every member of every race is an individual, first and foremost, and that individuality must be cherished and protected. If someone is successful, they might be accused of trying to be “white” — as if only white people can be successful. However, there are some people who might sell out their culture completely and know they are doing this — those are the real Uncle Toms. I suppose those words are offensive to me because they are exercised too freely.

I suppose my opinion agrees with both sides. Yes, anyone can be racist, but it certainly helps if one’s words are backed by societal power and long/on-going history of that power. It’s like a homosexual person making fun of a heterosexual person and someone trying to say it’s the same thing as godhatesfags dot com — O Rly?

It’s always a privilege for me to learn more about the subject matter, and to hone my arguments to teach the whites in my class about the existence of privilege, the knee jerk denial of it’s existence, and the reasons for this denial. In my work trying to understand the issue of racism as it relates American Indians, has lead to a broader understanding of White Privilege through discussions with “educated” people of privilege on the subject of sports mascots. I am always shocked to learn they just can’t understand why Native people are offended when they aren’t bothered at all. If it doesn’t bother them, and they are intending to honor, then it “shouldn’t” bother Native people. Some even claim to be Native, and tell me I’m offending them since it’s ok with them. So we have another dimension of appropriation of native identity. Another argument is to tell Native people they need to work on their pressing problems like alcoholism, joblessness, and poverty first and stop wasting their time on the White school’s traditions. These other issues are so much more important, and why waste precious time and resources on the politically correctness of a mascot.

Great discussion! I will be able to use some of the excellent arguments I’ve read in this blog while discussing the denial of White privilege in the debates surrounding the stereotyping of Native people by sports and media. Racism = Privilege + power applies very much to the mascot issue. Football is a stronghold to White male power clearly.

what power do you have to oppress others, tempest? well you have the power to bitchslap me all up the avenue. but then i can bitchslap you right back down the ave, so we’re even there.

what makes me uncomfortable about your definition of racism at the top of all this is that *you*, tempest, are one of the smartest, most clear-eyed and concise and sharp-pointed analysts of, well, everything, that i’ve met. you have the power (smarts, education, verbal ability, energy, drive) to smack down 99.999% of our fellow citizens with a few well-chosen sentences. i am not being misty-eyed. this is genuine power. so to say that you yourself are incapable of being racist because you have no institutional power is both disingenuous and self-disempowering. you could wreck almost anyone if you chose to. individual power is … powerful. and it can be destructive. just ask condi.

your current “powerlessness” is chosen. you *decided* not to go the corporate or conformist route. i respect you for that (i did it too), but choosing to step out (or further out than you already are) doesn’t mean that your outiness is oppression.

and i say this realizing that any minute of every day you can step outside your door and get smacked down by even the lowest of the low–for being black. it’s not a simple equation is it?

or let me put it this way: i’m asian, but neither little, nor a goodie goodie. east asians are famous for being afraid of black people, but i steel myself when i see a black man headed my way because that purposeful walk means only one thing: he’s gonna get up into my shit for being asian. 99% of the time, i’m right, too. not all, not most, not even that many black men. just the ones who actually walk towards me that way.

do you know how long it’s been since i’ve taken shit from anyone but a black man for being asian? and yet, every single one of those black men who give me shit are wearing the aura of homelessness or some similar economic desperation on them, and they give me shit while i’m on my way to my fancy nonprofit, bleeding-heart job, or on my way to my mfa creative writing class, stinking of perfumed soap.

i’m aware of my race all day long, and it’s not usually wealthy whites who make me aware of it, who make me cringe. it’s people who make me cringe for myself, then make me cringe for them. whoever it was above who said that blacks can only be racist to asians is just. not. seeing. the mutuality. it’s not a simple equation, is it?

the top-ranking neighborhoods in the country for income are … asian. also, the bottom-ranking neighbhorhoods in the country for income are … asian. wrap your head around that. or around this: the percentage of asians with MDs far outstrips the overall percentage of asians in the population, and yet asian-specific diseases and health issues get short shrift, even compared to african american-specific diseases and health issues. asian american suicide, breast cancer, and obesity rates have either reached par, or outstripped everyone else’s.

asians have entrée, limited, of course, into whiteness, while blacks don’t. and yet asians are routinely derided in mainstream media in a manner that african americans haven’t been for nearly half a century. we have no naacp-equivalent organization, no effective asian political caucus. african americans have real, if limited, *institutional* power. asian americans don’t. yet no one even needs to ask which is higher in the racial hierarchy, which less limited in terms of how each individual in the group is welcomed into opportunity. it’s complicated, isn’t it?

if whites set the terms and forms of racism against asians, and yet it’s blacks who most often operate it, is it still racism? if an asian operates white racism against blacks at the behest of whites who make it a condition of acceptance, of economic opportunity, is *that* the racism you define as backed by institutional power? if my life is oppressed every day by the harrassment of people poorer and less privileged than i, but who exist together as a group while i am alone as an individual representative of *my* group, who is oppressed?

okay, how about this one: i know two white men who grew up in communities of color. one is from a working class family and grew up in a primarily latino school district. he was beaten up every day for two years by his latino classmates. sure, he got to go home and watch tv shows that were all white and listen to white voices on the radio. probably most of his teachers were white, too. but what about him being bullied every day in school? for being white? where does that fit in?

the other was middle class and was bused into a predominantly black school district. again, beaten up every day for years for being white. how do you measure how this man feels about race, about his own race and identity? if a kid is a minority in his school and mistreated by the majority every day for significant portions of his life, how much exactly does it matter that he graduates from daily prejudice into majority status? (should we ask israel?)

and all this is *completely* aside from latinos, indians, and arabs.

(like i said, i gots no answers.)

Personally, I operate from the premise that it is impossible to grow up in this inherently racist culture and not internalize the tacitly accepted presumptions which lie behind racism. How these attitudes play out depends largely on one’s degree of privilege.

A big part of the problem is that usually such attitudes are unconscious, thus unseen and unacknowlegded. So, for me, the challenge lies in my willingness to be open to seeing my own internalized racism at play. It is not easy, because none of us likes to think of oneself as a “bad person” (and most reasonable people will agree that racism is “bad”), so I think that the real work is to be done is with ourselves, as individuals . . . followed up by action of course!

Racism – Encyclopedia entry

Reference.com, which uses the wikipedia entry, has a motherload of information on “racism” including much of what we have been discussing, Foucault’s study of race, Etymology, listing of “accused” racist groups (of all varieties), links to all sorts of related topics.