Yesterday I wrote about racially skewed voting in the Democratic primaries; specifically, Barack Obama's 92-8% majority among black voters in Pennsylvania, and similar percentages in other states.
"Racism" is the sort of word that can mean more or less whatever anyone wants it to mean, and its de facto manifestations always find a way around de jure definitions.
The United Nations uses the definition of racial discrimination laid out in the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, adopted in 1966:
...any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, color, descent, or national or ethnic origin which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life.(Part 1 of Article 1 of the U.N. International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination)
This sounds a lot like apartheid in South Africa, or slavery, or "poll tax" in the Jim Crow South, but racism can express itself much less officially.
If you're a graduating high school senior, and you invite 92 percent of your white classmates to a party after the prom, and only 8 percent of your black classmates, reasonable people may interpret your guest list as evidence of a strong racial preference, and the fact that it doesn't exactly fit the UN definition of "racism" isn't much of a defense.
So it's simpler to define racism as any preference based on race, regardless of which color is expressing the preference. This definition has the advantage of avoiding quibbles, but it also falls into the usual trap of substantiating the idea of "race."
The only "race" that really exists among creatures like you and me is the human race, and in every other context the word is a holdover from pseudo-scientific white supremacist propaganda. It was supposed to describe a subdivision of humanity distinguished by hereditary features like a low brow or a wide nose, or conversely by the opposite set of features, and only a bunch of drooling idiots could have ever believed that this sort of description had any pan-African or trans-European validity.
Now we're apparently stuck with this stupid "concept" forever, but at least we can flag it whenever it turns up, so I'll add one significant qualification to my definition of racism:
"Racism" is any preference based on the illusion of race.
But however carefully the word "racism" may be defined, there's probably so much emotional charge attached to it that it can never be clarified, and it would probably be better to flush the whole archaic concept back into the white supremacist sewer it crawled out of.
None of these qualifications have prevented many of Barack Obama's supporters from throwing the ugly accusation of racism at Bill and Hillary Clinton.
No sane person can believe that after 25 years in public life a previously invisible strain of racism has suddenly manifested itself in Hillary Clinton! But since even the most irresponsible mudslinging still sticks at least a lttle mud to its target, it's only fair to apply this muddy word racism wherever it may apply, by the clearest definition we can make of it, according to the not very elevating but probably unavoidable political principle that what's good for the goose is good for the gander.
John Kerry's non-response to the "Swift Boat Veterans" has sufficiently demonstrated that ignoring ridiculous charges is a recipe for political disaster.
So once the category of racism has been injected into the current Presidential campaign, if it applies anywhere, it also applies to a 92-8% split in the black vote for Obama, and anyone who can't see it in those numbers should jump in a time machine and argue against a long series of federal judgements against de facto segregation in the schools. Segregationist lawyers dreamed up all sorts of excuses for skewed numbers like 92-8, and if you're going down that road, you're in very bad company.
None of this means that black voters who voted for Obama are "racists," although this may look like a paradox.
I think "racist" is a designation most people reserve for individuals who make "racial" preferences a central part of their lives, and one vote in a Democratic primary is a long way from an obsession.
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About the difference between
About the difference between race and gender issues in the current primary campaign...
Hillary Clinton's career hasn't really been centered on issues related to gender. As First Lady her main focus was health care, and her subsequent political elevation has more to do with dynastic politics than gender. This is not to say that her only or even her main qualification for the Senate or Presidency is dynastic, but if her name were Barbara Boxer, she might be in the Senate, but she probably wouldn't be running for President.
But Barack Obama has put racial identity at the center of his political career from the very beginning. He organized black voters in Chicago, he ran for the Illinois State Senate from a black district, and he belongs to an almost completely black church, which just happens to have the most politically influential black congregation in Chicago.
It's just a red herring to try to identify Obama with Jeremiah Wright's tinfoil-hat extremism. Obama is way too smart for that nonsense. But it's even worse in a way that he silently went along with Reverend Wright because the consequences of denouncing the "God damn America!" sermons would have been fatal to Obama's political ambitions in the black community in Chicago.
So Obama plays the race card whenever it suits him, and the charge of "racism" is so poisonous in the United States that the very possibility of it scares away most critics of Obama's insubstantial and opportunistic politics.
Rightly or wrongly, the charge of "sexism" isn't nearly as powerful, and a lot of people throw it around in daily life without doing much damage. A couple of weeks ago I was walking into the library at UCLA behind a boy and girl, and when the boy held the door open, the girl called him a "sexist"... but they still walked into the library and disappeared together.
It's hard to imagine anyone calling anyone else a "racist" and passing it off as lightly.
I am not claiming that gender issues are intrinsically less significant that racial issues. International trafficking in prostitution is an important issue for me, and the mistreatment of female prisoners in the brothels of eastern Europe and southeast Asia is as brutal as any other form of slavery.
__________________________http://jacobfreeze.com