{"id":631,"date":"2021-03-16T17:10:28","date_gmt":"2021-03-16T21:10:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/conservativeproletariat.com\/?p=631"},"modified":"2021-03-17T16:25:42","modified_gmt":"2021-03-17T20:25:42","slug":"when-you-call-someone-a-racist-what-do-you-actually-mean-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/conservativeproletariat.com\/?p=631","title":{"rendered":"When You Call Someone A RACIST, What Do You Actually Mean? (Part 1)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
by Reid Fitzsimons<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Accusing others of Racism in our present political and social climate is an efficient means for a person to find validation and meaning in their lives, at least for the kind of person that needs a bad \u201cThem\u201d so they can be part of the good \u201cUs.\u201d This is not unlike ill-balanced religious zealots who need others to serve as sinners so they can view themselves, in contrast, as Saints. Of course, as with so many things of this nature, word meanings are vague and often remain poorly defined.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In reality, racism is a concept that resists simplistic definitions, but rather it is better explained by category and example, which this article endeavors to do. First, an introductory warning: to anyone reading this who is emotionally and culturally fragile- prepare your fainting couch, because in a few instances the \u201cN-word\u201d is going to be spelled out fully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those who are inclined to hurl out the insult of \u201cRacist\u201d typical do so mindlessly, and they largely mean nothing more than anyone who disagrees with them, but if they were able to attach to it some significance, these are some possibilities:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

True vile and hate-filled racism<\/strong>: In prior times, up into the 1960\u2019s perhaps, truly vile racism was often public and even proud, but, where it exists today, it\u2019s more of an hidden internet phenomenon among a handful of losers: the mostly mythical \u201cwhite supremacists.\u201d It is, fortunately, the least common form of racism, despite what social justice activists yearn to believe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In my 62 years I have encountered this type racism twice. The first was in the late 1970s in Mississippi, where a complete jerk from a privileged family, who somehow became a lawyer, talked to me about \u201cblacktopping the road-\u201d intentionally running over black people. He also talked about the joys of \u201ccoon hunting\u201d at night. As far as I know he was (fortunately) a despicable coward and never lived his fantasies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second encounter I had was in South Alabama soon after my wife and I moved there in 2008. I went to introduce myself to our new and elderly neighbor, and was asking him about lawn mowers when he spontaneously declared, \u201cI don\u2019t care much for niggers.\u201d He went on to talk about the good old days when \u201cniggers knew their place\u201d and one time they got uppity and had to be driven from (presumably by the local KKK) a town in the area. We came to learn he had been a lifelong angry drunk who, ironically, had a hypoxic brain event soon after, and ended up being cared for by black caregivers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Biased racism<\/strong>: this is a form of racism that has existed in my lifetime and was somewhat common- an inculcated a belief among certain whites that blacks were, simply, inferior. A perfect example of this type was as follows: I knew a person who owned (in the government backed loan sense of the word) a large amount of farmland in Mississippi, and he had a habit of hiring people as his farm managers right out of central casting for thieving rednecks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once, just after the latest manager absconded with pockets full of loot, I asked him if he might consider hiring Archie as the manager. Archie was a black man who had long been a dependable employee and knew farming front and back. He, the land owner, replied succinctly that Archie could not be considered because, \u201cHe\u2019s a nigger.\u201d He did not say this with any animosity and indeed he treated Archie and all his black farmhands well. It was simply a belief that a black person couldn\u2019t function as a manager. In his defense, sometime later a woman with an agricultural related college degree applied to be the farm manager. I asked him why he didn\u2019t hire her and his response was a predictable, \u201cBecause she\u2019s a woman.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Observational and descriptive racism<\/strong>: When I lived in East Africa many years ago it was common for kids to run about excitedly as I passed by shouting \u201cMzungu,\u201d which essentially means \u201cWhite Person\u201d in Swahili. They were certainly not racist, simply observing that they saw a relatively rare white guy. Unfortunately, invoking a description of race, for example saying in a rural mostly white small town, \u201cI saw a black guy crossing the street,\u201d might be construed by easily offended \u201csocial justice\u201d activists as racist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Progressive politicians, feeling anointed and obligated to somehow shield black Americans from reality, have decreed that using race in describing a suspected criminal, for example, is prohibited. Hence, in some cities it is disallowed to say, \u201cThe suspect is a young black<\/em> male of average size.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unfamiliar racism<\/strong>: There was an old widow neighbor (recently deceased) who my wife and I helped quite a bit- we live in a mostly white rural area and she simply hadn\u2019t been around black people much. I was telling her that we were going to bring over from Kenya a black man to attend college in the US, that he was going to spend some time with us, and that she would enjoy meeting him. She said, \u201cI don\u2019t know, I\u2019ve never had a black person in my house before,\u201d a statement that could easily elicit a charge of racism from sensitive activist. Once he arrived she was very welcoming, was quickly and thoroughly charmed by him, and even gave him a hug when he left for school. This man is from a very dark-skinned tribe, and she observed, \u201cHe\u2019s the darkest black person I ever saw!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Statistical racism<\/strong>: Black people comprise roughly 13% of the US population, a neutral statement, and in theory statistics, involving race or otherwise, should be neutral and objective. In reality they are used to support or dispute political and cultural narratives, and are often manipulated, customized, or ignored in the process.  This politization of numbers involving race are perhaps most common in polemics regarding crime, and to be honest crime stats are not supportive of progressive narratives. First it should be observed that the majority of what might be called \u201cstreet crimes\u201d are committed by young males, regardless of race, so the 13% figure is in reality much lower, i.e it\u2019s not accurate to say \u201cX\u201d number of crimes are committed by 13% of the population who are black. However, a disproportionate number of violent crimes are<\/em> committed by young males who are black. Regarding the most serious crime- murder- and keeping in mind that most murders occur within racial groupings, there is no question that the vast majority of black Americans murdered every year are killed at the hands of other blacks-generally about 90%; this is not unexpected. What is<\/em> terribly disconcerting is that about half of murder victims are black (2018, of about 14,100 total murders, a little less than 6,100 victims were white, and a little over 7,400 were black), and<\/em> approximately 50% of all<\/em> murders are committed<\/em> by black people. In 2018 approximately 6,600 black Americans were murdered in black-on-black violence. (https:\/\/ucr.fbi.gov\/crime-in-the-u.s\/2018\/crime-in-the-u.s.-2018\/tables\/expanded-homicide-data-table-2.xls<\/a>) This is sobering, considering that in the disgraceful era of lynching, generally considered to be from 1882 to 1968, roughly a tota<\/em>l of 3,500 black Americans were killed by lynching.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vastly different conclusions can be drawn from these disturbing statistics: racists can and do claim it is simply in the nature of black people to be violent, whereas racialist apologists can and do claim the murder rates are a result of poverty and \u201csystemic racism,\u201d implying a sense of victimization. As a conservative, and consistent with my life experience which includes the military and living in countries with primarily \u201cblack and brown\u201d populations 1) I fully dispute that black people are naturally more violent, 2) that poverty is the primary motivating factor behind crime (indeed, I believe crime is largely a cause <\/em>of poverty), 3) that crime and<\/em> poverty are largely caused by failure to maintain family integrity- especially the presence of fathers- which is most acute in black communities in the US 4) the degeneration of family integrity has largely been caused by Great Society social programs, the rise of media anointed celebrity \u201ccivil rights leaders\u201d who are motivated by self-interest, profit from government and corporate grants, and benefit from chaos associated with the loss of family integrity, and 5) the failure of local black community leaders, very much including religious leaders, to encourage responsibility that should be associated with fatherhood, and personal responsibility overall- it\u2019s simply easier to say blacks are victims and are incapable of governing their own lives, that extrinsic factors are primarily to blame.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Accusing others of Racism in our present political and social climate is an efficient means for a person to find validation and meaning in their lives, at least for the kind of person that needs a bad \u201cThem\u201d so they can be part of the good \u201cUs.\u201d This is not unlike ill-balanced religious zealots who ...continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[3,7,10,2],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5ynMC-ab","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/conservativeproletariat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/conservativeproletariat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/conservativeproletariat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/conservativeproletariat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/conservativeproletariat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=631"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/conservativeproletariat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":635,"href":"https:\/\/conservativeproletariat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631\/revisions\/635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/conservativeproletariat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/conservativeproletariat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/conservativeproletariat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}