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Al Barger and MoreThings - getting people's goats since 1998.
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December 20, 2004
On noticing racial differences
According to the proper liberal orthodoxy, we're not supposed to even notice race or ethnicity, and certainly we're not supposed to use that knowledge to make any bit of judgment- other than that darker people are oppressed and should get affirmative action. Otherwise, you're a RACIST- evil incarnate.
This outlook is unnatural and untenable. You can't NOT see that someone is black or Jewish or Asian or whatever a lot of the time.
Further, there are in reality lots of very strong cultural and behavioral differences highly statistically related to race and ethnicity. To pick a mundane and hopefully non-inflammatory example, working at the Village Pantry years ago I noticed that the big majority of our sales of menthol cigarettes were to black folks. They were also much more likely than others to pick flavors of soda- peach or root beer or such, rather than just grabbing a cola.
All sensitivities and presumptions seem to be set so high on Deeply Offendable, though, that I risk being labeled a "racist" just for noticing even benign and neutral matters such as what kind of sodas are favored by black folk. God forbid you ever get the idea that black folks have a taste for watermelon. Why that would be so bad absolutely escapes me, but there it is.
Regarding fried chicken: It is said by horrible racists that black folk have a strong taste for fried chicken. This is considered a horrible offense, although again I do not know why.
I hasten to add that I do not necessarily see such an exceptional cultural divide on this fried chicken issue. If you came to a Barger family reunion or a picnic at the local Baptist church, you'd witness the end of many a fine bird. Who doesn't like fried chicken?
Further, on a personal level, I'm a fried chicken eatin' SOB. Howlin' Wolf was the "Back Door Man." In the words of the Willie Dixon song he made famous, he declared "I eats more chicken than any man seen." He was a hell of a man with whom I could not have competed gastronomically let alone musically. Short of Howlin' Wolf, however, I haven't met the black man who would surpass my taste for the bird.
Of course, other things should often immediately override cheap ethnic presumptions. A few months ago, for example, we had a fellow of African descent show up here at the farm, but I never for a second expected some dysfunctional Boyz N the Hood character. Far more significant than his race, he was a computer geek being sent by Dell to fix my PC. That's one brother I was especially happy to meet. Race just never came up as any kind of topic. There was no reason why it would.
As it turns out, Ken was born within a few weeks of the same time as me, which gave us some commonality of experience and memory right there. He also has some knowledge and interest in country music, picked up in a previous life as a truck driver. I sent him home with Junior Brown and Grandpa Jones CDs.
Of course, noticing and expecting patterns of behavior of the negative variety is unfair to many individuals. Perhaps there are high rates of criminality, and lower rates of interest in educational achievement among some parts of the black community. But not little Freddy, though. Mama takes him to church twice a week, and he spends his evenings doing homework and thinking about college.
You can't expect people not to notice patterns of behavior among various racial and cultural groups, though. It's like asking people to pluck out their eyes.
It's also tantamount to expecting people to shun their legitimate self-interest. You're asking a lot for an employer to absolutely disregard that one group has given you four times higher rates of absenteeism than the company average, say.
That's totally unfair to little Freddy, but life isn't fair. Also, it might be more productive to focus on getting after those who are fulfilling those negative stereotypes and making all your people look bad, rather than putting everything off on the ill will of others guilty only of having eyes.
The most I know to do in this imperfect world is to try to do right the best I can with people one-to-one. You might practically have to take race into account if, for example, your car's broke down in a questionable neighborhood. Much of the time, though, there's simply no necessity of such considerations. It's generally your best bet to discount expectations based on ethnicity or any kind of group considerations such as gender or sexual orientation as much as reasonably possible.
Particularly, not just fairness but truth and accuracy demand readily replacing the actual and particular in the place of the general or stereotypical. You might have certain expectations if the main thing you know about someone you just met in the street is their race, but even a couple of minutes talking to Freddy should tell you that he's a different kind of fellow.
Of course, five minutes talking to his no-good cousin Mike would tell you that cuz is every bit of the crappiest stereotypes of his people. Just be careful not to acknowledge that you notice this however, or you are a racist devil.
posted by Al at 12/20/2004 05:29:00 AM
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