Political Correctness: Make a Judgment

I went into a department store in downtown Columbus once, looking for a turkish towel (also known as a "bath sheet"). I was waited on by two young ladies, both very dark-skinned. If you had heard them, rather than seen them, you'd have assumed that they were white teenaged girls from suburbia. The accent with which they spoke English, and the speech mannerisms and vocabulary were strictly "white" middle class suburban. I agree with Lash that there is an implicit assumption of identical personality and experience in claiming that anyone black person can speak for all other black people--making assumptions about how someone views the world based on skin color alone is absurd.

Is saying that I think I know more about being a black man in america than I would if I were white the same to you as if I say I claim to speak for ALL black men in america? If so, therein lies the crux of our disagreement on that lil' thing.

On the matter of rape? On the issues of having cause to be fearful while travelling or walking alone at night? On the matter of menstruation or child-bearing or childbirth or the inconvenience of very large breasts?

Women do not have to have identical notions and experiences on these matters for me to acknowledge that when they speak about them that I probably ought to shut up and not pretend that I have superior insights.

I'm sure there are learned men, doctors, and others who may know a lot more about what makes women tick than many women understand.

I just reject your assertion outright.

You may know more about your own feelings and experiences--but no more...

S'okay by me...

We disagree, that's all.

Blatham--

You understand rape. The things you mentioned are drawn from personal experience--not snood's contention that a black person knows more about being black... Some black people don't have a clue about the black experience in America.

This is why we shouldn't be respecters of nothing more than color or sex...

Stepping back in deference to skin color or sex parts is an overcorrection due to latent racism or sexism... I think people who do it are hiding something.

Bad argument, lash. A biologist will have a better grasp of the cellular and genetic factors which give rise to variations in skin pigmentation than anyone else but that hardly gives them ANY grasp of what it might be like to live a life as an albino.

You said two things, Snood:



That is a not unreasonable statement to have had. Had you said special insight or perspective or voice (and i know of no one here who impedes your "voice") about issues specifically involving some or most African Americans, you'd have had a better point to make, though. But as it stands, the inference to be taken from this is that you have a special insight or perspective or voice about issues specifically involving all African Americans--which would be a preposterous contention.

Then you said:



This is particularly weak--all you can speak to is how you perceive the manner in which African American men are regarded. In this case, you apparently are willing to assert that you can intuit infallibly how all Americans who are not of African descent regard all American men who are of African descent. I don't mean to rain on your parade, but i have no good reason to assume that you are that reliably and accurately perceptive. Quite apart from that, prejudices and resentments which are part and parcel of your own personal experience can and likely would have a profound effect on your perception of how others regard African American men.



Have a nice trip.

Maybe it's the 'pc' pressurized bloviating from the likes of Sharpton or (insert name of militant feminist) that Lash and Set are resisting. But I can't see how anyone can deny that, say, a gay person in america would understand more about life as a gay than a straight one would...

lash said

No, as a male I do not "understand" rape in the same manner that I do not and cannot "understand" menstruation or "understand" what it is like to be Lash.

He may understand why a woman feels the way she does--what motivates her--where her fuc.ked up perception skews her ability to see the world around her clearly...

People are faulted--and cannot be counted on to evaluate the world based on no more qualification than what's between their legs ot what color their skin is.

They may certainly own and tell their experiences.

I just don't trust them to intergrate those experiences into a pristine, unbiased summary--trusting their vaginas or pigments to be oracular devices.

Yes, Lash can tell experiences---I cannot speak for experiences of ALL women...

So long as your contention is that the gay person in question might know more about how most gay people live . . . it's the absolute character of your earlier remark which leaves you open to criticism in the instance of the first statement.

In the instance of the second statement, you were way out in left field, because you contend that simply being black means you know more about how other people regard black men. You know nothing about that which hasn't been told you by those concerned--you might reasonably be said to be able to perceive what might condition how other people regard black men in America, but you cannot know to a certainty.

And it doesn't take an Al Sharpton making pronouncements to fall into a trap of believing that your skin color gives you special, privileged knowledge--especially when the subject is what people who aren't black think.

Well, I don't think there will be any meeting of the minds on this one, but just for the record I don't think anyone's claiming being "pristine" or "unbiased" or "oracular"...
Or that their opinions should be regarded as such...

To the degree that I even grasp what you've just tried to argue there...

Who is talking about an absolute absence of bias? All that is in question here is whether particular sorts of knowledge or experience are unattainable for some while not for others.

Tell me what it is like to view the earth from the moon or from orbit. You can imagine it, you can read accounts of it, but in not having experienced it, you have nothing but arrogance or ideological stance behind you if you insist that an astronaut and you have equality of viewpoint/experience/knowledge on the matter.

Sure. Snood cannot presume what anyone else is thinking, black or white. And he cannot presume that as a black man he has some better grasp of what a white man's life experience is like. But the converse is also true. I cannot presume to know what living as a black man or a chinese female might be like. And if one of them wishes to share that understanding with me, then I probably better not presume I have a better take on it than him/her.

Ignoring the Mountie's snotty comment which reveals just how poorly he reads English--it is precisely because Snood's original two part statement did not specify a preponderance of understanding, but implied an absolute and unqualified understanding that i objected.

His statement was in two parts. The first part alleged that he knows more about what it is like to be black in America than those who are not black, simply because he is black. I responded that it was reasonable, as long as it was qualified. The qualification which makes it readily acceptable would be to acknowledge that he doesn't know absolutely how life is for all people in America who are black--and he has since trimmed his sails in that regard.

His second statement, however, is that simply being black gives him a special insight, or perspective, or "voice" on the subject of how people who are not black regard people who are. That's way out there. Even leaving aside the high probability that his judgment in such a matter would be significantly conditioned by his personal experiences entailing resentments and misunderstandings, there is just no plausible basis for alleging that the color of his skin gives him a privileged insight into how those who don't share that skin color perceive those who do. It was an inane assertion.

If I said I knew anything about how white people react to black men to a certainly, or that I definitely know more than any white person about such things, then I am certainly, definitely wrong. I didn't say that, but if I did, I would be wrong.

Yes, you can presume that. However, it would be the balance of wisdom to acknowledge that blacks and Chinese know more about than you do.



I know of no one here who has presumed as much.

When i was in university in the 60s, i had a roommate whom i will not name because i don't know that he would approve (if he's still alive, he might have died fighting for Robert Mugabe, or he might have died from living under Robert Mugabe's regime). He was from Rhodesia, which means that if he's home and still alive, he lives in Zimbabwe now. His ambition in life was to kill Ian Smith, who was then the leader of the white supremacist regime in Rhodesia. I don't think you could find a more succinct description of a militant and radicalized individual. One evening, a member of the campus branch of the Black Panthers came by to see him. His first mistake was to tell me i had to leave the room (i presume because i'm white), to which my friend reacted angrily by telling him he had no authority to order about anyone in that house. Then he said: "_________, you my main man." My friend responded angrily again, saying: "I'm not your man, i'm not anyone's man, i'm a free man!" The guy tried to smooth things over, but the conversation went from bad to worse, because they simply did not speak the same language. And, ironically, they probably both had the same attitudes toward white oppression.

Many, many years later, i worked for a chain store. I once complained to management that my manager and the assistant manager had been making racist comments about the customers. I got no action, so i wrote a letter to the local NAACP. That got a reaction. Among other things, i was ever after assigned to one of two stores in the "blackest" part of town. There i met Chester Siafa. I don't mind naming him, because what i will say about him was something he would say himself publicly, without demure. He hated American blacks. He hated them because he lived in a poor black neighborhood, and considered his neighbors to be lazy, criminal and stupid. I don't assert he was correct in his estimation, but that was how he saw them, and he did not hesitate to say as much to blacks or whites. He was from Liberia. He spoke English with a noticeable Irish accent--he'd grown up speaking a tribal language, and learned English from Irish missionaries. Local blacks made fun of the way he spoke, and treated him with a contempt equivalent to that he showed for them. He is not the only African, or West Indian of African descent who expressed a similar contempt for American urban blacks that i have met, nor who reported being badly treated by American urban blacks.

Another man i knew, a white man, once told me that the first startling thing he had noticed when he moved to the American south was black men on tractors, in the fields working their farms. This is something he just never saw in the Midwest from which he had originated.

A black from Detroit may well know more about how urban blacks live, in Detroit, in Windsor, Ontario, even, arguably, in any American city. But how much can he be expected to know about life for a black farmer in North Carolina--or a black or white farmer anywhere? You may say that referring to the experience of black Africans among American urban blacks, or black Islanders in such a situation, is a reference to the uncommon black experience. So? The point is that black people's experiences in America are no more monolithic than are the experiences of any other people who are described by a superficial trait.

And that is my point.