[net.politics.theory] defining racism -- Laura on compassion

laura@l5.uucp (Laura Creighton) (12/15/85)

In article <383@ubvax.UUCP> tonyw@ubvax.UUCP (Tony Wuersch) writes:
>In article <298@l5.uucp> laura@l5.UUCP (Laura Creighton) writes:
>>
>>I am not so sure that it is clear cut who is in the subordinate place
>>here.  The Whites may have economic superiority, but I know Blacks who
>>claim spiritual/moral superiority.
>
>I'm not sure I understand Laura here.  In general, it's not valid
>to go from "I'm better on this scale and you're better on that scale"
>to the inference "Well therefore we must be equal."  To me, racism
>is mostly restricted to a political and economic (organizational if
>you want to call it that, since that combines both) domain.

Hmm.  I don't know where you got the ``we must be equal'' from.  Not from
anything I wrote, I think.  My position is that whatever it is that causes
racism is not based in politics or economics.  I thought Richard Carnes
was arguing that racism only goes from the economically superior to the
economically inferior -- now I don't believe that this is what he had
in mind.  By definition, a bigot is someone who believe that he is
superior to some group of people by virtue of a quality which all members
of this group share (or lack).  Therefore, all racist bigots consider
themselves superior.  I think that when racist people have great
political power it will go hard on those they discriminate against, but
I do not think that it is the fact that they have the power which causes
the racism -- it was there all along.

Take the case of discrimination against Gays.  The Gay population is
sociologically very interesting.  There are rich Gays, poor Gays and
middle-class Gays.  They are not confined to any particular geographical
area.  There are certain Gay mannerisms which some Gay men adopt -- but,
by and large, you can't tell when you meet someone whether or not they
are Gay.  This is why so many of them could live in the closet. Now,
by your definition, I would expect that when Gay people started coming
out of the closet things would be more-or-less peaceful and quiet.  

This sure isn't what happened.  Just today I read that 3 youths were convicted
of killing a Gay man on Polk Street in San Francisco.  They were out
``queer-bashing''.  This is at the moral level of killing Jews for claims
of well-poisoning, and KKK lynchings.  What has happened?  In all honesty, I
do not know, but what I believe happens is that people have a great well
of frustration and hatred inside them.  They look for socially acceptable
ways to dump this and find out that thhe bottom line is ``is is bad to
hate people, except for Gays/Blacks/Orientals/Vietnamese/What-have-you''.
So they go out and hate people in group X, not because they have any
real dislike of group X but because they finally have found a role in
which they can hate.

>Unless we really want to get picky about cultural-religious connections,
>I'd rather leave spiritual/moral superiority out of it.  Especially
>since "racism" as it's commonly used happens to be an almost entirely
>Christian disease.

I beg to differ.  Pre-Christian south-east Asia, in any case was full of
Japanese/Chinese  Chinese/Japanese and Everybody/Korean racism.  This
much I know and I would be very surprised to find that racism is not
universal.

>>It is astonishing to notice how many
>>people who ``ought to know better'' who use this same release.  You get
>>Blacks who are as prejudiced against Whites as they claim Whites have
>>been to them, and feminists who are thoroughly anti-men, and Gays who
>>are utterly intolerant of bisexuals.  You would think that these people
>>would have developed compassion though their suffering, but no ... what
>>they have is an unbareable load of anger and frustration -- and they
>>dump it in the way that they claim to have been dumped upon.
>
>What does compassion have to do with it?  

Compassion is the antidote for prejudice.  It is impossible to be prejudiced
gainst someone for whom you feel compassion.

>And why, if you do, do you reach out and have compassion for them?  

Well, apart from a personal moral commitment to be compassionate, there is
the problem that it is not good for me to not be compassionate.

>Maybe because this society
>values personal understanding above social harmony and justice.  The
>problem with that is it lets people with less compassion use people
>who have more.  Seeing THAT leads to a decline in the compassion of
>the rest of us.

Holy Smokes, Batman, are you proposing social harmony and justice without
compassion?  as if compassion is not a pre-requisite for both of these?
I fear that we do not mean the same thing by any of these words then.

>Unfortunately, this society again is one which encourages people to
>dream they can do anything they want.  

Come again?  This is one of the *virtues* of this society.  It is the
people who believe that they can not dream and achieve who are the
frustrated ones who go about trying to bludgeon everyone into their
level of misery.  The dreamers are too busy trying to make their dreams
a reality.

>It encourages anomic, disconnected
>people to actively search for places where their worst dreams can
>be realized.  

Where did the ``worst'' come from?  Do you presume to judge everyone's
dreams for them?

>As I've said, although I appreciate and admire people with great
>compassion, compassion is not what this issue calls for.  Quite the
>contrary.  Substituting "realism", a sense that the world is real
>and changing it works in strange ways and takes work to achieve,
>for "compassion" might be better.

Now I am *SURE* that we are not using the word compassion to mean the
same thing.  Because you have compassion for someone does not mean that
you rool over and die and let him exploit you.  What it does mean is
that you are not going to add to the problem by hating him, and
encouraging prejudice against people in his group.  If you are up
against racism then one thing that should not be forgotten is that
the people who are racist have a problem with their own hatred.  I
once read that the reason that Gays were victims of so much violence
is that prejudioce against Blacks and Jews are now not acceptable.

If we now build more fire-walls to protect Gays, are the Asians and
the Mexicans next?  At some point we are going to have to give up
kludges like protectivve legislation and try to fix the real problem
of inexpressible hatred.  This one is going to be tough -- and I
think that you must study compassion in oder to overcome hatred on
a personal level.

>It's useful to know what someone feels to the extent that one can
>respond to it, without letting a compassionate attempt to understand
>it cloud one's judgment.  

Compassion does *not* cloud one's judgement.  Are you talking about
fear of hurting other people here?  This isn't compassion.

>Withholding compassion when you normally
>give it out freely is a very powerful way to express your beliefs
>about an issue.  

It is also a wonderful way to get the person you are disagreeing with to
shut his mind with a solid emotional commitment to disagree with you.  It
does little to help him see your point of view, and may cause him to believe
that he has to choose between his beliefs and you.  If he chooses to persist
in his beliefs, then the next person to deal with him will have a much harder
time of it since he has already made such a heavy investment in this belief.
If he abandons his beliefs, not through any understanding of error in his
ways but merely under your emotional threat of removal of compassion, then
you have not actually made any change in him which will keep him from making
similar errors in the future.  Or he may decide to persist in his errors,
only keeping them secret from you.

>Compassion should be a gift, not a reflex.  

No -- it should be both.

-- 
Laura Creighton		
sun!l5!laura		(that is ell-five, not fifteen)
l5!laura@lll-crg.arpa

friesen@psivax.UUCP (Stanley Friesen) (12/19/85)

In article <336@l5.uucp> laura@l5.UUCP (Laura Creighton) writes:
>
>>Unless we really want to get picky about cultural-religious connections,
>>I'd rather leave spiritual/moral superiority out of it.  Especially
>>since "racism" as it's commonly used happens to be an almost entirely
>>Christian disease.
>
>I beg to differ.  Pre-Christian south-east Asia, in any case was full of
>Japanese/Chinese  Chinese/Japanese and Everybody/Korean racism.  This
>much I know and I would be very surprised to find that racism is not
>universal.
>
	Was?!?! To my knowledge there is *still* considerable racial
prejudice in Asia, for instance in Taiwan(which I have some knowledge
of). And, I believe that Christianity is still very much a *minority*
religion there.

>>Maybe because this society
>>values personal understanding above social harmony and justice.  The
>>problem with that is it lets people with less compassion use people
>>who have more.  Seeing THAT leads to a decline in the compassion of
>>the rest of us.
>
>Holy Smokes, Batman, are you proposing social harmony and justice without
>compassion?  as if compassion is not a pre-requisite for both of these?
>I fear that we do not mean the same thing by any of these words then.

	Very likely, perhaps you could help each other out by giveing
your respective definitions of comapassion. Actually Laura's
definition of compassion seems to me to be essentially the same as the
the definition for "personal understanding", or at least they are very
closely related.
>
>>Unfortunately, this society again is one which encourages people to
>>dream they can do anything they want.  
>
>Come again?  This is one of the *virtues* of this society.  It is the
>people who believe that they can not dream and achieve who are the
>frustrated ones who go about trying to bludgeon everyone into their
>level of misery.  The dreamers are too busy trying to make their dreams
>a reality.
>
	I think you are again talking from different definitions.

>If we now build more fire-walls to protect Gays, are the Asians and
>the Mexicans next?  At some point we are going to have to give up
>kludges like protectivve legislation and try to fix the real problem
>of inexpressible hatred.  This one is going to be tough -- and I
>think that you must study compassion in oder to overcome hatred on
>a personal level.

	I think this is a very good idea, and it requires a lot of
public education.
>
>>It's useful to know what someone feels to the extent that one can
>>respond to it, without letting a compassionate attempt to understand
>>it cloud one's judgment.  
>
>Compassion does *not* cloud one's judgement.  Are you talking about
>fear of hurting other people here?  This isn't compassion.
>
	In fact I would say that "knowing what someone feels so that
one can respond to it" is a major component of what you, Laura, would
call compassion(am I right?) In that case the distinction that is
being drawn above is artificial. I certainly understand what you are saying
about compassion not necessarily clouding judgement.

>>Withholding compassion when you normally
>>give it out freely is a very powerful way to express your beliefs
>>about an issue.  
>
	Sounds rather manipulative and degrading to me. This sort of
stuff tends to get me rather irritated, or even down-right stubborn.

-- 

				Sarima (Stanley Friesen)

UUCP: {ttidca|ihnp4|sdcrdcf|quad1|nrcvax|bellcore|logico}!psivax!friesen
ARPA: ttidca!psivax!friesen@rand-unix.arpa

laura@l5.uucp (Laura Creighton) (12/30/85)

In article <914@psivax.UUCP> friesen@psivax.UUCP (Stanley Friesen) writes:
>
>	Very likely, perhaps you could help each other out by giveing
>your respective definitions of comapassion. Actually Laura's
>definition of compassion seems to me to be essentially the same as the
>the definition for "personal understanding", or at least they are very
>closely related.

This is coming.  ``Personal understanding'' does not quite cut it, though it
is quite close.  The problem with it is that people think that they can
turn personal understanding on and off like a faucet.  Compassion is more
of an attitude, or a way of being than this.

>>>respond to it, without letting a compassionate attempt to understand
>>>it cloud one's judgment.  
>>
>>Compassion does *not* cloud one's judgement.  Are you talking about
>>fear of hurting other people here?  This isn't compassion.
>>
>	In fact I would say that "knowing what someone feels so that
>one can respond to it" is a major component of what you, Laura, would
>call compassion(am I right?) In that case the distinction that is
>being drawn above is artificial. I certainly understand what you are saying
>about compassion not necessarily clouding judgement.

Knowing what someone feels is a major componenet of compassion.  Knowing why
(or at least trying to) is another component.

-- 
Laura Creighton		
sun!l5!laura		(that is ell-five, not fifteen)
l5!laura@lll-crg.arpa

laura@l5.uucp (Laura Creighton) (12/30/85)

>By "state" I don't just mean official national institutions; I also
>mean what a citizenry thinks a nation or important groups in a nation
>are.  In "Western" states, what the citizenry believes takes on more
>importance and less importance than in "Eastern" states.

Okay, but if we are going to continue discussing this, then you are going
to have to clearly demark when you mean ``important citizens'' or ``important
groups of citizens'' rather than official national institutions. I read
``state'' as ``official national institution'' all the time, and we will
have lots of misunderstanding if we don't watch for this.

>
>Anti-semitism is a specific case of racism.  I think most racism
>follows the lines of just what I've described above for historical
>anti-semitism: because of the organization of popular opinion and
>national institutions, bad news about the victimized would spread
>and add to popular information, while good news about the victimized
>would get bottled up by intent or because people didn't think it
>significant or interesting.

>I don't think anti-semitism has much to do with people's psychology;
>as I've written in a past article, I think it has more to do with
>the definitions of nation historically developed by states which
>did not include Jews as a protected group

>The only "psychology" involved, I'd suggest, is that people follow
>what they believe and commonly know to be the case.

More disagreement begins here.  The question is, why do people commit acts
of violence out of racism.  The world is full of people who think that
Blacks are inferior, Jews are grasping monsters, and that Gay people are
unspeakably evil -- but still they do not go out and beat up Blacks, Jews
and Gays.  What is it in the makeup of some people that make them into
fag-bashers?  Wherever it is, I believe that it is psychological.

>*** END OF DIVERSION ***
>
>There are more "psychological" theories than mine.  Laura's (broadened
>by Jan), sounds too Freudian for me to swallow.  A social opportunism
>of the id does not cover most serious examples of racism:

Actually, it is a lot more Jungian than Freudian, but I will let that pass...

>
>>[Laura Creighton  sun!l5!laura  (that is ell-five, not fifteen)]
>>>...  what I believe happens is that people have a great well
>>>of frustration and hatred inside them.  They look for socially acceptable
>>>ways to dump this and find out that thhe bottom line is ``is is bad to
>>>hate people, except for Gays/Blacks/Orientals/Vietnamese/What-have-you''.
>>>So they go out and hate people in group X, not because they have any
>>>real dislike of group X but because they finally have found a role in
>>>which they can hate.
>
>The problem with this is that most modern racism has little to do with
>frustration at all.

Here you are going to have to do a little more than make this claim.  What
motivates people to do racist violence then if not frustration and hatred?

This is getting long -- I will continue later.
-- 
Laura Creighton		
sun!l5!laura		(that is ell-five, not fifteen)
l5!laura@lll-crg.arpa