I see at least two distinct kinds of bigotry: the defensive and the nonchalant.
Yes there are successful and educated people who are raging bigots but in the USA white-on-PoC bigotry is overwhelmingly from failures; people who for want of intelligence, education, or achievement-orientation are low on the income ladder. They know they're …
I see at least two distinct kinds of bigotry: the defensive and the nonchalant.
Yes there are successful and educated people who are raging bigots but in the USA white-on-PoC bigotry is overwhelmingly from failures; people who for want of intelligence, education, or achievement-orientation are low on the income ladder. They know they're "not much" so they need someone to regard as even lower because they can't turn off the TV long enough to read a book or go to night school. Their bigotry is a defense to keep their inferiority at bay.
Then you have the Israeli variety, a deeply held conviction that they really are the master race and that others are beneath them. There is a widely held view among the settler movement that the killing of an Arab (or any non-Jew) doesn't count as murder. A few years ago a very popular book called "The King's Torah" (https://jewishcurrents.org/the-kings-torah-preemptive-murder-of-non-jews) laid this out explicitly.
These two varieties of racism are amply distinguishable. The nonchalant variety is not defensive at all.
I remember reading one of Richard Wright's books when I was in college and he described his grandmother hating on the Jews. She called them 'Christ killers' and I was really disgusted. One thing that has bothered me since I was small was people from disadvantaged groups hating on people from other disadvantaged groups. I said to my mother, "Geez, everyone's gotta have someone else to shit on." You'd think a half-black old lady in 1940s America would have a little sympathy for Christianity's buttmonkeys for two thousand years, right? No.
I thought it was appalling that women who described themselves as feminist were racist; that black men who pissed and moaned about racism nevertheless thought all women were 'bitches'. It bothered me in the early '80s to learn how young black men were the number one killer of young black men; twenty years after civil rights was in full swing and this is what King and others died for? So ignorant assholes can pop each other off in the streets and blame racism? I still have sympathy for He Who Must No Longer Be Named and his (in)famous Pound Cake Speech. I agreed with every word at the time as it was what I was thinking - perhaps less colourfully than Cosby put it - at the time. I mean, black guys weren't yet killing each other over sneakers and pound cake. Probably more like crack.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: Humans suck, universally.
I see at least two distinct kinds of bigotry: the defensive and the nonchalant.
Yes there are successful and educated people who are raging bigots but in the USA white-on-PoC bigotry is overwhelmingly from failures; people who for want of intelligence, education, or achievement-orientation are low on the income ladder. They know they're "not much" so they need someone to regard as even lower because they can't turn off the TV long enough to read a book or go to night school. Their bigotry is a defense to keep their inferiority at bay.
Then you have the Israeli variety, a deeply held conviction that they really are the master race and that others are beneath them. There is a widely held view among the settler movement that the killing of an Arab (or any non-Jew) doesn't count as murder. A few years ago a very popular book called "The King's Torah" (https://jewishcurrents.org/the-kings-torah-preemptive-murder-of-non-jews) laid this out explicitly.
These two varieties of racism are amply distinguishable. The nonchalant variety is not defensive at all.
I remember reading one of Richard Wright's books when I was in college and he described his grandmother hating on the Jews. She called them 'Christ killers' and I was really disgusted. One thing that has bothered me since I was small was people from disadvantaged groups hating on people from other disadvantaged groups. I said to my mother, "Geez, everyone's gotta have someone else to shit on." You'd think a half-black old lady in 1940s America would have a little sympathy for Christianity's buttmonkeys for two thousand years, right? No.
I thought it was appalling that women who described themselves as feminist were racist; that black men who pissed and moaned about racism nevertheless thought all women were 'bitches'. It bothered me in the early '80s to learn how young black men were the number one killer of young black men; twenty years after civil rights was in full swing and this is what King and others died for? So ignorant assholes can pop each other off in the streets and blame racism? I still have sympathy for He Who Must No Longer Be Named and his (in)famous Pound Cake Speech. I agreed with every word at the time as it was what I was thinking - perhaps less colourfully than Cosby put it - at the time. I mean, black guys weren't yet killing each other over sneakers and pound cake. Probably more like crack.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: Humans suck, universally.