Attempting equality
My life is insane lately, and I really don’t have much time for blogging. I’ll hopefully be back for real in mid-to-late August. In the meantime, I thought you readers would find this image (from Fail Blog) interesting:
Two dolls for sale, identical in every way except skin and hair color—and price. The black doll is about two dollars cheaper than the white doll. Ridiculous! I was glad to see such a picture identified as a “fail.”
It got me to thinking, though, about the studies cited in Brown v. Board of Education and recreated by ABC News and others, which I read about not too long ago at Sociological Images. While it maybe less universal than it was a few decades ago, many black children will simultaneously identify a black doll as the one that looks like them and identify a white doll as the one that looks “nice” and “pretty.” You might expect that children would typically want to play with dolls that look like them, but white dolls tend to sell faster to people of all skin colors. (I remember an essay written by a woman who worked in an upscale toy store about how she had an easier time selling the broken, scuffed, white demo doll than the brand new non-white versions of the same doll. If I can find a link to that, I’ll stick in an update here.)
So what should we make of this? Is it the store’s fault that there is higher demand for one product than another? It makes a twisted kind of sense to shift prices like this, if your goal is to move more of the black dolls in your inventory. Higher demand of any product leads to higher prices for it, and lower demand encourages sellers to lower their prices. I still think the message that it sends, that depicting a black person is worth less than depicting a white person, is far too repugnant to justify the pricing. What do you think?
UPDATE: A commenter over at SocImages, in a post of theirs about this one (thanks for noticing, guys!), figured out the source of the story I had forgotten above. It’s from “This American Life,” by Chicago Public Radio, in an episode from January of this year. Go here to read about it or listen to the recording.
Discussing race and racial slurs
I saw the below video today, thanks to the awesome and always fascinating blog Sociological Images. It’s a clip from the ABC’s The View, a coffee klatsch sort of show aimed generally towards women of whatever age range it is that doesn’t mind listening to Barbara Walters talk. You can read all the hosts’ bios here, but the two primarily involved in this conversation are Whoopi Goldberg and Elisabeth Hasselbeck.
There are a couple things in this clip that stuck out to me. The first is the general topic of the power of language. I understand why it’s considered more acceptable for black people to use “the n-word” than for white people to do so. I have no problem making self-deprecating jokes about any number of my personal qualities, but if a friend of mine laughed and chimed in with agreement, I’d be a bit offended. When I say it, it’s a funny joke; when you say it, it’s rude. The question is, is that rational? Does the meaning of what’s said really depend that much on who says it? I find that hard to believe. It’s not offensive for me to use a slur referring to a group I’m a part of, because of course I didn’t mean it “that way” — but surely you are capable of not meaning it that way either. It seems more than a little unfair that, simply by virtue of your existing and your being born with certain qualities, a layer of meaning has been added to all your statements which you can never really escape. Your words will always be white-person-words or black-person-words or [fill in an adjective]-person-words, never really just words.
The position that’s argued in the video by Goldberg, and to a lesser degree by Sherri Shepherd, is that the word “nigger” has history which ought to be remembered and which is an important part of black culture. It’s “taking back” a slur, making it your own. It’s similar — though obviously different in magnitude — to a woman calling herself and other women “chicks” with a sense of female empowerment, or to LGBT folks saying “fag” or “dyke” with pride in their sexual orientation. The idea is that by embracing the term, you can make a once-derogatory word into a simple descriptive adjective, or even a positive quality.
That brings me to the second issue: to what extent do we create the society we live in simply by acting and imagining? Hasselbeck says, “We don’t live in different worlds. We live in the same world,” and the other hosts disagree. They’re right, of course — issues of “race” (whatever that means) and ethnic differences are not yet non-issues. There’s still discrimination and prejudice. Hasselbeck’s response to this is to acknowledge that there’s nothing fundamentally different about people with different skin pigmentation, and to try to live her life as though no differences exist. On the other hand, Goldberg’s response is to try to use a racial slur as though it were a friendly, endearing word. Both seem to have the ultimate goal of creating a society without prejudice. Who’s using more pretending and wishful thinking to try to get there? Whose approach is more likely to be successful?
It seems to me that both of them could be right, but at different times. Reclaiming a slur can encourage pride in one’s identity, and it can turn something deeply offensive into something hardly worth remarking upon. That’s worthwhile progress — it means moving past the worst parts of prejudice. However, I don’t think it’s a permanent solution. I said hardly worth remarking upon, not totally unremarkable, because keeping special terms that only “our people” are allowed to say, that continually remind everyone of past persecution of “our people” by everyone else, isn’t really going to eliminate boundaries. To create a society where we really all “live in the same world,” we need to give up language that serves only to exaggerate differences.
Nader wrong again
Ralph Nader made a fool of himself today in a not-so-well-thought-out attempt to look like a halfway reasonable presidential candidate. Just look at this:
“There’s only one thing different about Barack Obama when it comes to being a Democratic presidential candidate. He’s half African-American,” Nader said. “Whether that will make any difference, I don’t know. I haven’t heard him have a strong crackdown on economic exploitation in the ghettos. Payday loans, predatory lending, asbestos, lead. What’s keeping him from doing that? Is it because he wants to talk white? He doesn’t want to appear like Jesse Jackson? We’ll see all that play out in the next few months and if he gets elected afterwards.”
(Hat tips to Ben Smith of Politico.com and Reason: Hit & Run for pointing out the story.) When I read this, I knew I wanted to write something here, but I was too sickened to think clearly about it. After a few hours my mind has cleared a bit. Let’s make a list of the outrageous things in this episode:
- Nader thinks that African-Americans should put “ghetto” issues above all.
- Nader thinks that if a black man doesn’t talk about poverty all the time, he’s “talking white.”
- Nader thinks that the public would like Obama more if he acted more stereotypically black.
- Nader really wants Obama to spend a lot of time talking specifically about … asbestos?
- Nader believes there is no meaningful difference between the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates.
#3 is just silly. Even Nader couldn’t honestly believe that Obama is losing votes because he’s not black enough. A few choice moments with West Virginia voters should be enough to convince anyone the opposite is true. Even if there are some voters who think that Obama’s not “black enough” (whatever that means) and who make their political decisions solely by where candidates fall on some weird racial spectrum, they’re not going to favor McCain (or Nader, for that matter) over Obama. They surely aren’t blacker than him.
#4 is, I suppose, just a special case of #1, so I’ll deal with them together. In order to truly respect every person as a complete individual, we have to be able to deal with the fact that sometimes people don’t identify primarily by whatever characteristic we as society isolate and stereotype them with. The example that comes immediately to mind is the Log Cabin Republicans. While it surprises me that there are GLBT folks willing to join the party of politicians who believe their sexual orientation to be entirely sinful and deserving of scorn, I realize that there are of course some people who place a higher priority on having more agressive foreign policy and less agressive taxation than on having the most tolerant laws regarding their sexuality. It’s inappropriate to assume that if someone is a member of a minority group, their primary political concerns ought to be the issues that define that minority. So yes, it’s true that there’s a disproportionately large number of homes in low-income neighborhoods that still have asbestos ceilings and shingles. It’s also true that median income levels are lower in black households than white households. But it’s insulting to imply that Obama ought to, by virtue of his ethnic background, spend so much time campaigning on “ghetto”-related issues that his stance on asbestos in particular is well-known.
Incidentally, Obama has worked and campaigned against all these problems Nader tries to call him out on: predatory lending practices, asbestos, lead, and so on. But who cares about facts when you can be ignorant and racist?
That brings me to #2 on my list. I cannot stand phrases like “acting black” or “talking white.” When someone characterizes behavior in those terms, they are making a sweeping generalization that is both socially damaging and flat-out wrong. I understand that when a white teenager wears sagging pants, listens to hip-hop, and uses street slang, he’s becoming (or attempting to become) part of a culture that is largely populated by black teenagers. However, that does not mean that all black teenagers are part of that culture, and it certainly does not mean that all black people are. It’s impossible to accurately describe someone as “acting black” when different black people act in every possible different way, and when white people are just as capable of acting in those same ways. Similarly, it makes no sense for Nader to claim that Obama is “talking white.” In what way — perhaps by discussing the Federal Reserve, climate change, and public health policy rather than simply what it’s like to live in the ghetto? It appears that Nader thinks black people are not allowed to talk about these things; these topics are for white people to discuss, and he won’t tolerate any black people pretending to be white by discussing them. This is beyond absurd!
Finally, I’m baffled by Nader’s intention to run for president in the first place, and his insistence that neither the Democrats nor the Republicans can do right by the country because they are both too involved with corporate interests and thus equally bad (#5 on the list). You can make the case that two political parties are not enough to accommodate the range of political perspectives Americans hold. You can certainly make the case that there are flaws common to both major political parties. However, it’s simply ludicrous for Nader to pick out one aspect he identifies as a flaw and ignore all other facets of the party platforms.
Nader already has no chance of winning the election, and it’s stupid to cast a vote for him even if you think he’s the best candidate. Your vote will make much more of an impact in deciding which of the mainstream candidates wins the presidency. The fact that Nader dismisses both major parties so flippantly shows that he couldn’t be a good president — one of the most important job requirements is an ability to compromise and form coalitions among the extreme variety of views in this huge country. But more importantly, this incident illustrates that Nader is completely out of touch with American society. Maybe, deep down, he’s running not to win but to set the agenda for national debate. If he was a very skilled campaigner he might be able to pique the public’s interest and at least achieve that goal, but if this is any indication of his abilities, he’s not going to manage even that.
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