A Christian Liberal is NOT an oxymoron.

Posted by XT on June 8th, 2008 in General

A couple of commenters at Blue Jersey are taking me to task - for the act of saying that it is stupid to call the use of “scowling” an act of racism. Their proof - well, I’m not Asian, so how could I possibly know? My answer is this: I have a brain and I’ve not taken leave of my senses.

A fuller answer would include a reference to the definition of racism:

1. a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one’s own race is superior and has the right to rule others.
2. a policy, system of government, etc., based upon or fostering such a doctrine; discrimination.
3. hatred or intolerance of another race or other races

I would simply say that saying someone “looks angry” and “walks around with a scowl” lies very far afield of any of those definitions - and it doesn’t matter at all how someone “feels”. Racism is not a subjective experience.

One commenter says:

It might in fact “dumb” but somehow it doesn’t feel right to ridicule Mr. O’Toole’s impression and dismiss it with such certaintly unless you’re of Asian descent and understand that point of view. (Thurman if you’re Asian then I take this back!)

It doesn’t matter if I’m Asian or not - just like it doesn’t matter that Kevin O’Toole has a Korean mother. Think of it this way - the word “nigger” is so horrible that polite company now refers to it as “the n-word” (which I think is priggish and pretensious and stupid as all Hell). Would it be less offensive if Barack Obama were to say, “I don’t care if people use that word against me. It simply doesn’t bother me.”? Of course, the slight has nothing to do with whether or not it is accepted as such.

It works the other way, as well. If someone says Barack Obama is a “chowder-head”; would he be right to accept it as racism? Hardly. The term doesn’t refer to race, or to any racial characteristic, at all. Now, if someone said, “He’s a chowder-head like all blacks,” then the situation is different. But Kevin O’Toole wasn’t told that he “scowls like an Asian” or that his “mixed ancestory makes it look like you scowl.” No, he was told, “It looks like you scowl a lot.”

You know what? My Grandma looked like she scowled a lot, too. Her eyebrows kind of drew together and hung over her eyes a bit and the corners of her mouth turned down - if you didn’t know her, you would have thought she was mad about 90% of the time. She wasn’t, though. Interestingly, she didn’t have a drop - as far as I know - of Asian blood. I’ve been told that I scowl when I am writing or otherwise occupied with thinking beyond the task at hand. I’m pretty sure that I have no more or less Asian blood as my Grandma.

This is why America cannot make any progress on racial issues. One side wants to act as if they don’t exist and the other wants to act as if they exist anywhere and everywhere. In addition, there are forms of hate that are not racially-based. But confusing everything by throwing charges of “racism” about needlessly only confuse every issue. Until enough people on both the left and right get rid of the nincompoops feeding the confusion, then we will stumble along blindly swinging at a bugaboo that actually exists, but is both much smaller and much more insidious than we believe it to be.