Table of Contents
I. Introduction
II. Definitions of Racism, Prejudice, Discrimination, Stereotypes (etc.)
III. Hispanic-American Issues, Immigration, and "Where Are You From?"
IV. Political Correctness (incl. P.C. Language on College Campuses)
V. Racial Politics: Trump vs. the Democratic Party
VI. Reparations, Affirmative Action, and "Reverse Discrimination"
VII. Native American Issues
VIII. Busing and Black Incarceration
I. Introduction
The following 28 sets of questions were written as part of the planning stages of my appearance on an episode of a public access television show based in Highland Park, Illinois. The topics of that episode are race in America and political correctness.
I believe that these questions are the most important and relevant questions that need to be asked, in order to produce a thorough discussion of race relations.
I did not answer all of the questions that follow (I refrained from answering questions #7, 8, 10, 11, 13, 14-19, 22-26, and 28). However, my readers should be able to discern my opinion from the way I worded most of those questions.
In case it's necessary to explain my positions any further, I support political correctness and safe spaces, but only when they don't interfere with the right to free expression and the right to debate what the truth is. And I do believe that Donald Trump is a white supremacist and a racist, and I have criticized (and will continue to criticize) the Trump Administration's immigration policies as reminiscent of the Nazi regime that governed Germany during World War II and the Holocaust.
Along with many of these sets of questions, I have included links to news articles, so that the reader can learn more about the original context of the news about American racial politics to which I am referring.
II. Definitions of Racism, Prejudice, Discrimination, Stereotypes (etc.)
1.
What is the definition of “racism”? What is the definition of
“racial supremacy”?
Answer:
Racism is “Prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed
against someone of a different race, based on the belief that one's
own race is superior.” Additionally, the term “racism” is often
used as shorthand (or a synonym) for “racial supremacy” and “the
belief in, or promotion of, racial stereotypes”.
Racial
supremacy, in particular, is “the racist belief that one's race is
superior to others, and that therefore that race should dominate,
subjugate, or control other races, or the belief that the superior
race is entitled to do so.”
2. Is the term “racist”
being overused? Does calling everything “racist” diminish the
seriousness of racial hatred? Why has this term become so popular
recently?
Answer:
Because many people lump racial prejudice, racial supremacy / racial
superiority, racial stereotyping, and racial discrimination in with
racism, and refer to all of those things (as well as making
insensitive jokes about race) as “racist” actions.
The term
“racism” has thus become a convenient descriptor for any and all
actions which could be described as racially insensitive. The
popularity of the word's use in recent years, could owe in part to
the fact that the word now refers to a wider and less specific set of
arguably racist actions and statements than it used to.
On the
other hand, those who feel that it is appropriate
to call a lot of people and things “racist”, do so because they
believe that racism is now practiced mostly covertly,
as opposed to overtly. The Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s-60s
featured obvious, public, out-in-the-open discrimination against, and
segregation of, African-Americans; not just in private and on
business properties, but by the government itself.
Some of those who consider racism a serious problem, believe that
racism has become harder to detect, and some even believe that we are
being subconsciously programmed to
support white supremacy, by sectors of our society such as government
and advertising.
3. What is
the definition of “racial prejudices”?
Answer:
“Preconceived opinions about race, which are not based on reason or
actual experience.”
4. What is the
definition of “racial discrimination”?
Answer: “Preferential
treatment on the basis of race.”
5. What is the definition
of a “racial stereotype”?
Answer:
“A widely held, but fixed and oversimplified, image or idea, of a
particular race of people.”
6. What is the difference
between a positive stereotype and a negative stereotype?
Answer:
A negative stereotype is deliberately intended to be hurtful, while a
positive stereotype is usually intended as a joke and is usually not
intended to offend anyone.
However,
positive stereotypes can still be hurtful, such as the positive
stereotypes that “Jewish people are good with money” and “all
Asians are good at math”. These ideas are stereotypes about
positive traits, but they are still generalizations, so they are
still harmful because they contribute to the belief that all members
of a certain group are the same.
III. Hispanic-American Issues, Immigration, and "Where Are You From?"
7. Is it
insensitive to refer to Hispanics as “Mexicans”, or as “Spanish
people”? Should we be careful about using the term “Mexican”
and “Spanish” to describe Latino, Hispanic, or Chicano
people who might not even be from
Mexico or Spain to begin with?
8. Former
Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway was recently criticized for
asking reporter Andrew Feinberg “What's your ethnicity?” in
response to his asking her to explain Trump's tweet telling four
congresswomen to “go back” to their districts. The reporter
replied that he was American, but Conway kept asking, because she
wanted to know where the reporter's parents
were from.
Was it
racially insensitive of Donald Trump to suggest that his critics in
Congress “originally came from countries whose governments are a
complete and total catastrophe”, when three out of the four people
he was criticizing were born in the United States, rather than
abroad?
Is it
racially insensitive to suggest that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is
“from Puerto Rico” just because her parents are Puerto Rican; and
that Rashida Tlaib is “from Palestine” just because her parents
are Palestinian? Wouldn't that imply that Ayanna Pressly is every bit
as much “from Africa” as Ilhan Omar is? What about a
Jewish-American person who was born in America, but has never been to
Israel? Where is that person “from”, if not America or Israel?
Is it
racially insensitive to ask someone where their family is from; to
keep asking where someone is “from” until they tell you about an
ancestor that wasn't born in America? Is it reasonable for someone to
be upset or offended by being asked such a question?
Sources:
Kellyanne
Conway asks reporter “What is your ethnicity?”:
IV. Political Correctness (incl. P.C. Language on College Campuses)
9. What is
the definition of “politically correct”?
Answer:
“Conforming to a belief that language and practices which could
offend political sensibilities, should be eliminated.”
10. Some
Americans feel that the culture of political correctness has gone too
far. Critics of “P.C. language” (politically correct language)
say that it causes people to be too cautious about the words they
use. They say that worrying about avoiding offending people could
make us afraid to speak the truth, and might even cause a “free
speech chilling effect”.
Do you
believe that using “politically correct language” is a good way
to help promote respectful dialogue about race in America? Or do you
believe that P.C. language has gone too far? (And if you think it has
gone too far, what are some examples of it going too far, that you
object to?)
11.
The conversation about political correctness extends to not only race
and ethnicity and nationality, but also to religion, biological sex,
and gender identity. Thus, the treatment of transgender individuals,
as well as of non-whites, has become an important and controversial
issue on college campuses.
Several
years ago, in Toronto, Canada, psychology professor Dr. Jordan
Peterson became notorious for refusing to refer to his students by
their preferred pronoun, saying “I am not going to be a mouthpiece
for language that I detest.” This came at a time when Canada was
considering Bill C-16, a proposed bill by the Canadian parliament
that would have prohibited gender discrimination on campuses, but
also would have required people
to use the gender pronouns which others prefer.
Given that
anti-discrimination could potentially threaten the freedom of speech
in Canada – and maybe even result in “compelled speech” or
“government mandated speech” - is there a realistic chance that
the same kinds of laws limiting the freedom of speech on campus,
could be implemented at universities here in America?
Source:
Dr.
Jordan Peterson on why he won't use people's preferred pronouns:
12. What
are “safe spaces”?
Answer:
“Places, including some college campuses, which are intended to be
free from bias, conflict, criticism, or potentially threatening or
upsetting actions, ideas, or conversations.”
Practices
common in “safe spaces” are “trigger warnings” and
protections from “micro-aggressions”. Trigger warnings are
warnings that information may upset listeners, while
“micro-aggressions” are uses of offensive, “aggressive”
language, which cause others to feel attacked.
13. In
2016, the University of Chicago received praise for defending
academic freedom and freedom of speech, for announcing that it would
not be creating “safe spaces” for students. The university
announced that it would not disinvite speakers, invited to speak on
controversial topics, if students protested and demanded
disinvitation.
As a
reminder, riots broke out in Berkeley in 2017, after the University
of California at Berkeley decided not to disinvite controversial
“alt-right” speakers, including Milo Yiannopoulos and Lauren
Southern.
Do you
believe that the need for political correctness – and so-called
“safe spaces” on campus - help
college students learn about race in America, history, etc.?
Or are you worried that these things shelter
students from reality, and from an educational experience that's
meant to expose them
to ideas that conflict with and challenge their own ideas? What kinds
of protections do students need on campus, if any?
Sources:
Riots
occur after University of California Berkeley cancels Milo
Yiannopoulos event:
V. Racial Politics: Trump vs. the Democratic Party
14.
Do you believe that President Trump a racist? Why or why not?
Why
do people think he's racist? What has he said, or done, that
indicates that he is a white supremacist?
15.
Is the Trump Administration's immigration policy racist? Is it
intrinsically racist to exclude immigrants on the basis of national
origin, or is just an issue of the president stressing the need to
enforce existing law?
16.
Many defenders of the president have pointed out that some
immigration policies - such as separation of children from families,
and knocking-over water left for migrants – were started under the
Obama Administration. The Trump Administration says it's just
enforcing existing laws.
The
Obama Administration has been criticized for setting deportation
records. But Obama and Hillary Clinton also supported D.A.C.A.
(Deferred Action for Child Arrivals).
Did
the Obama Administration help immigrants? Was Obama's immigration
policy good for America? Should Hillary Clinton have done something
more to help immigrants, besides just support D.A.C.A., if she
expected to prove herself more pro-immigrant than Trump, and win the
presidency?
Sources:
17.
“The Squad” - the quartet of four progressive Democratic
legislators whom are all women of color – have become well-known
for their outspoken criticism of Donald Trump, and his
administration's policy towards immigration, the B.D.S. movement, and
other issues. They have even called for his impeachment.
Trump
and the Squad have called each other “racist” back and forth
several times, over several issues, especially the issue of whether
the treatment of undocumented immigrants at the border is comparable
to the conditions seen in Nazi concentration camps. The Squad accuses
Trump of racial antipathy against people of Hispanic or African
origin; while Trump accuses the Squad of racism for supposedly
always making his statements about race, and for their arguably
anti-Semitic criticism of the State of Israel.
Whose
statements are “less politically correct”; the president's, or
the Squad's? Is it always racially insensitive to compare the
treatment of undocumented immigrants to the treatment of victims of
the Holocaust, or is it possible to warn people against repeating
another potential Holocaust-like situation without
diminishing the seriousness of that crime against humanity?
What
could be done to improve U.S.-Jewish and U.S.-Islamic relations,
without offending the political, religious, and racial sensibilities
of any of those groups?
18.
Statistics show that black home ownership rates did not go up or down
from the beginning to the end of the Obama Administration.
Unemployment among blacks is down, but that could be due to decreased
enrollment in unemployment benefits, and the way unemployment is
measured.
That,
and the fact that black homeownership rates are not
currently at an all-time high
(as Trump has claimed) point to the possibility that the Trump
Administration is being “irrationally exuberant” about how much
it has improved the financial situation of black Americans. In fact,
black homeownership is now
at an all-time low.
Did
Obama help African-Americans? Why did the majority of blacks vote for
Trump instead of Hillary in 2016? Have African-Americans been doing
better economically and financially under Trump than under Obama, or
is it still too early to tell?
Source:
Black
homeownership at 50-year low:
VI. Reparations, Affirmative Action, and "Reverse Discrimination"
19.
Some Americans still feel that the history of slavery, segregation,
discrimination, and poverty that have plagued African-Americans,
still has too much of an effect on their ability to get ahead in the
economy. Many Americans who feel this way, believe that reparations
for slavery are an appropriate and necessary response to the
financial struggles of black descendants of formerly enslaved people.
Democratic
presidential candidate Marianne Williamson is running on a platform
that includes reparations, with an amount of money to be negotiated
at a later date ($200-$500 billion), be disbursed over a period of 20
years, for the purposes of reconciliation with the black community,
and, as she says, as “payment for the debt that is owed”. The
money would be paid to a reparations commission, made up of a panel
of black leaders.
Presidential
candidate Andrew Yang has proposed a somewhat similar plan. Yang's
“Freedom Dividend” is a universal basic income plan, which will
be payable to all Americans who want to participate in it,
not just African-Americans. However, Yang says that Dr. Martin Luther
King Jr. supported the basic income idea, and the Freedom Dividend
could become sort of a surrogate for reparations if Yang became
president.
Will
reparations help African-Americans recover from slavery, or help them
get ahead financially? Or are reparations hurtful to
African-Americans' independence and self-esteem because they assume
that all black people need this
assistance?
What
are some potential obstacles to getting a reparations bill passed in
Congress?
Sources:
20.
In 2016, white Texas student Abigail Fisher lost the second of her
two U.S. Supreme Court lawsuits (after winning the first) against the
University of Texas at Austin, which she alleged did not admit her
because of its affirmative action program and its preference for
non-white students.
Affirmative
action is a college admission policy which intends to “tip the
playing field in the other direction” in order to account for the
advantages whites have had in getting opportunities to go to college.
Some consider college affirmative action policies “reverse
discrimination” or “reverse racism”. Perhaps the same could be
said about reparations.
What
is the definition of “reverse discrimination”?
Answer:
“”The practice or policy of favoring individuals belonging to
groups known to have been discriminated against previously.”
To
put it another way, “reverse discrimination” is discrimination
against members of a social group or class which believes itself to
be superior, practiced by members of the supposedly inferior class
which usually finds itself discriminated against.”
In
modern America, the term “reverse racism” usually refers to
alleged discrimination against whites by non-whites.
21.
What are some other practices – aside from reparations and
affirmative action - that could be described as “reverse
discrimination” or “reverse racism”?
Answer:
One example is the assumption that all white people are racists or
white supremacists. Another example is the increasingly popular
practice in the Democratic Party of openly and intentionally giving
more speaking time to women and non-whites, than to white men.
22.
Are reparations and affirmative action necessary to make up for
America's history of unequal treatment of non-whites? Or do these
policies themselves perpetuate
racism, just in the opposite direction (that is, against whites)?
VII. Native American Issues
23.
In May, Democrats including Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren
pulled a bill that would have affirmed the federal reservation
designation of tribal lands in Massachusetts, after Trump called the
bill “unfair”. Proponents of the bill conjectured that Trump's
casino deals in the state, may present a conflict of interest, which
could explain Trump's opposition to designating the Mashpee Wampanoag
Tribe reservation as trust land.
What
do you think would help Native Americans more; giving them more (or
possibly better) land, or giving them casinos? Or will it be
necessary to enact some sort of reparations -type bill, to improve
relations between the U.S. federal Government and the Indian tribes?
Source:
Trump
calls Warren bill on Indian lands “unfair”, Trump's casino deal
may present conflict of interest:
24.
In October 2018, Elizabeth Warren's DNA results were released,
revealing that her ethnic background is between 0.09% and 1.5% Native
American. Warren has since apologized to the Cherokee Nation for
trying to use the DNA test to justify her claim that she has Native
American heritage.
However,
prior to that apology, Warren's critics accused her of exaggerating
the extent of her Native American heritage, in order to get special
treatment such as a minority college scholarship and political clout.
Are
Warren's critics right? Does Warren have a right to recognize her
Native American heritage (as little as it is), or is it racially and
politically insensitive of her to move forward with her campaign,
given that she has offended the very community she claims to come
from?
Source:
VIII. Busing and Black Incarceration
25.
In July, during the first round of debates for the Democratic
nomination for president, California Senator Kamala Harris confronted
Joe Biden over his opposition to busing of black and white students
to public schools. Biden was against school busing in the early
1970s, at a time when President Richard Nixon was urging the
desegregation of public schools “with all deliberate speed”.
Biden
has also been criticized for having authored the Clinton omnibus
crime bill (The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of
1994), which put one or two million non-violent offenders in jail,
most of them black and brown.
Do
these positions on busing and crime control, suggest that Joe Biden
is a racist? Can Biden win the presidency, or even the Democratic
nomination, if he continues to be dogged by the same sorts of rumors
of racism which have followed President Trump?
Sources:
Kamala
Harris criticizes Joe Biden over 1970s busing position:
26.
Members of the so-called “Alt-Right” - such as Ben Shapiro and
Milo Yiannopoulos - have gained notoriety for using statistics to
dispute claims that blacks are subject to harsh arrests and sentences
more often than whites are.
What
are the statistics anyway? Do African-Americans really serve longer
sentences than whites, and are they more likely to be killed by
police during arrests than white people are? How do these facts
compare with statistics about the rates at which blacks commit
violent crimes?
Is
it “racist” to point out that violent crimes are
disproportionately committed by African-Americans? Or is it more
“racist” to fail to consider that the history of racial
discrimination and poverty, may have contributed to the current high
black crime rates which we are seeing today?
Sources:
Data
showing that law enforcement is tougher on blacks:
27.
Many people wishing to be “politically correct” refer to the
imprisonment of black people as “modern-day slavery” and “The
new Jim Crow”? Why is that? Why do some people think that slavery
never ended, and was never abolished?
Answer:
Considering the high number of African-Americans whom are
incarcerated – many of them unable to vote – it's arguable that
prisons are continuing the legacy of slavery, albeit under a
different guise.
The
facts that most prisoners are forced to work, and unable to vote,
mean that they have no freedom but must work (like slaves), while
they are counted under the census but their voting power is given to
legislators whom they cannot choose (also like slaves).
The
13th
Amendment prohibited slavery, but permitted
“involuntary servitude” as a punishment for committing a crime.
But if we consider that many people are in prison for victimless
crimes, locking them up – and
taking away their freedoms, their vote, and their rights to own
property - could hardly be considered a just punishment.
Sources:
Black
incarceration and prison labor are “modern-day slavery”:
28.
What do you think are the most important things that the American
people, and/or the U.S. Government, can do, to help promote
reconciliation and justice, in a way that heals racial, ethnic, and
religious antipathies and divisions?
Written on July 30th and 31st, 2019
Published on July 31st, 2019
