The word "racist" ... Has it lost its meaning?
rebornFixer
Posts: 4,901
‘Racist’ label is losing its meaning, writer says
By Jean Buchanan
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Email This Post Share this Print this Digg Yahoo! Del.icio.us Facebook Reddit Drudge Google Fark Stumble It!
A writer on AlterNet.org explores the frenzy of outing “racists” in the article: “Redefining ‘racist’ in the rather complicated age of Obama.”
Keli Goff writes: “It appears that somewhere on the road to this imaginary post-racial destination that President Obama’s election was supposed to magically catapult us to, that our country has made a few weird turns along the way and instead of ending up in Post-racial Land, (which is as mythical as Dorothy’s Oz) we have ended up in Obsessed-With-Racial Land.”
She refers to the Harry Reid “Negro” issue, the Dan Rather “watermelon” brouhaha and the multitude of monkey jokes over the last year, among many others.
“So why does it seem that every time we turn around there is another “racist” being outed?” Goff asks. “Well for one, because we now have a black president people talk about and think about race more than they have ever been forced to in the history of our country. We have had black celebrities and black billionaires, but the president of the United States is the only person that every news outlet in America must cover and every powerbroker in America must acknowledge. As we have seen over the last year, there has been quite a learning curve as members of the media, and the political and professional ruling classes learn how to talk about a person who is a member of the race that many of them have spent much of their lives and/or careers either ignoring altogether, or only acknowledging in passing.”
Goff has several concerns: that the word “racist” is being bandied about so much that it is losing its meaning, that we will become afraid to talk to each other for fear of saying something clumsy or stupid, and that we spend so much time of these incidents that we don’t have time to talk about issues involving race that really matter.
By Jean Buchanan
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Email This Post Share this Print this Digg Yahoo! Del.icio.us Facebook Reddit Drudge Google Fark Stumble It!
A writer on AlterNet.org explores the frenzy of outing “racists” in the article: “Redefining ‘racist’ in the rather complicated age of Obama.”
Keli Goff writes: “It appears that somewhere on the road to this imaginary post-racial destination that President Obama’s election was supposed to magically catapult us to, that our country has made a few weird turns along the way and instead of ending up in Post-racial Land, (which is as mythical as Dorothy’s Oz) we have ended up in Obsessed-With-Racial Land.”
She refers to the Harry Reid “Negro” issue, the Dan Rather “watermelon” brouhaha and the multitude of monkey jokes over the last year, among many others.
“So why does it seem that every time we turn around there is another “racist” being outed?” Goff asks. “Well for one, because we now have a black president people talk about and think about race more than they have ever been forced to in the history of our country. We have had black celebrities and black billionaires, but the president of the United States is the only person that every news outlet in America must cover and every powerbroker in America must acknowledge. As we have seen over the last year, there has been quite a learning curve as members of the media, and the political and professional ruling classes learn how to talk about a person who is a member of the race that many of them have spent much of their lives and/or careers either ignoring altogether, or only acknowledging in passing.”
Goff has several concerns: that the word “racist” is being bandied about so much that it is losing its meaning, that we will become afraid to talk to each other for fear of saying something clumsy or stupid, and that we spend so much time of these incidents that we don’t have time to talk about issues involving race that really matter.
Post edited by Unknown User on
0
Comments
This sounds reasonable, although I guess I'd ask you if you feel that some of your students (or other people for that matter) are finding that just talking about differences between people has become harder. My own take is that highlighting differences does not have to be racist per se, but that people (especially white middle-class people) often assume that there must be SOME negative motive involved.
Ah ... Yikes. I think ignorance is a good way to put it. Sometimes people say or do things out of a lack of knowledge rather than malicious intent, which was maybe one of the things on my mind when I started this thread.