Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Peaceful Dave's avatar

Visible "Racial" characteristics; melanin, hair texture (follicle shape), nose shape, cheekbones, epicanthic fold, etc. give a recognizable tribal association. That would mean little or nothing except that people attach subculture perceptions to the tribe. If the view of the subculture is negative it is seen as racism though it is properly tribalism/culturalism.

As is often discussed in The Commentary, it is often monolithic, and individuals are prejudged by perceptions of the tribal subculture. The visible characteristics in appearance act as an identifying uniform.

You mention the miscegenation that comes with "interracial marriage/partnerships." It will take some time for visible vestiges of our "uniforms" to fade into non-recognition since everyone is not participating. A thing that does matter and perhaps I am overly optimistic in thinking it could happen sooner is fixing perceptions. Stereotypes are the result of broad observation and can be either negative or positive (to who?).

This is where I think that black people (in America and other places) have a bit of a self-inflicted wound. I will be accused of victim blaming by someone, no doubt, but we do need to clean our own house. In an effort to resist assimilation into "whiteness", purposeful trappings of "black culture" (having nothing to do with Africa) establish a tribe where the people who seem to cling to it most strongly are people that are not the best positive examples. The most common "fear" of black people found in white, Asian and Hispanic people is criminality associated with black people with the "Gangsta" persona. If there is a disparity in crime it has numerous causes (not as simple as choosing one like poverty). Gangsta subculture is not just tolerant of criminality but glorifies it. The monolith attaches it to melanin without justification, except the gangstas purposefully create the association, a curse upon the majority of black people.

To understand why I write that it would be helpful to read https://www.amazon.com/Black-Rednecks-White-Liberals-Autonomy-ebook/dp/B003XRDBYE/ref=sr_1_1

Tribalism may always be with us, and tribes are not always bad since they are unifying within while divisive from the outside. Can we reduce negative tribal (racial) associations? It's not just a matter of fixing our own perceptions of others, but also fixing the somewhat logical/justifiable perceptions of our own tribe. I'm not just pointing at black people with that. We all have those issues.

Expand full comment
Grow Some Labia's avatar

"So my slightly more realistic hope is that we learn to judge each other based on meaningful qualities. Things like shared values and a common sense of decency and a willingness to stand up against injustice"

Agreed, although I'm writing an article right now about someone's challenge last year on Medium just before I got kicked off. One of Medium's very good, but too-woke-for-her-own-alleged-feminist-good writers (and now a super-woke Medium staff member) and I were debating trans issues, and she fell on the 'transwomen are women' side. She asked where my compassion was & I asked where her brain was. The article is about the thinking I've done about compassion since then, and how easy it is to be compassionate toward people you like, and less about Those Other People (the ones you don't).

The ones I'm less compassionate about are the 'acceptable' Thems on t'other side - the people who belong to fundamentalist religion, MAGAs, white supremacists, etc. It's not okay to discriminate against people who were born with a particular biology, but it's okay to discriminate against those with bad values, hateful creeds, etc.

Why are we less compassionate about *them*? They may not have been born into a particular biology but they were into a certain family, community, culture, etc. and may not know any other way. The ones who think critically may leave that unhealthy mental prison but others may not; I'm reminded of a book written by a woman who escaped a fundamentalist Mormon polygamous compound out West who described in detail why so many women never questioned or challenged the notion that they had to be held essentially in bondage to male whims and sexual desires. A fundamentalist Christian friend I had years ago - someone who wasn't very worldly or bright and with some likely brain chemistry-related emotional regulation problems - told me when she was three her mother told her Jesus loved her and always would and she believed it, and stuck with her birth religion without ever questioning it.

She was a very kind and sweet person which made her fundamentalism easier to overlook than if she'd been a hateful Republican (which, back then, over 35 years ago, they weren't nearly as bad, but Ronald Reagan was setting the scene for the mess we're in today).

I'm working slowly toward trying to engage with Those People in dribs and drabs to try and understand why they think as they do, and whether there are ways to get through their muddy thinking. And who knows, maybe I'll find something to challenge my own muddy thinking at times ;)

Some ask, 'What would Jesus do?' I ask myself, 'Who would Buddha hate?'

Expand full comment
28 more comments...