Uh, believing that it is disturbing is still an acceptable definition of white supremacy. Anyone offended by “miscegenation” is a racist, so I don’t understand what multiple supporting definitions has to do with anything.
I think that was Santayana.
aim higher than getting four pulitzer nominations. try to at least berate your own lack of insight.
heck, i’m stupid for having wasted any of my time reading the drivel this asshat published. f him, f his editor, and drat you mr. beschizza for bringing this dullard to my attention.
Well, that is the problem. It’s not a feature if it’s causing problems, it’s a bug, even if the majority of users are okay with that problem.
Besides which, even if what is right is decided by the simple majority, that doesn’t apply in this case, since there are principles held by the majority that supersede the idea of inter-racial marriage being wrong. The pursuit of happiness and all that is clearly a superior rule to “$ARBITRARY_GROUPING_1 should not marry $ARBITRARY_GROUPING_2”.
An interesting aspect of mixed ethnicity people is how the traits they show seem, and this is anecdotal through living in a community of mixed heritage kids, “better”, more frequently, or more apparently, than non-mixed. Looks are one example. As if the best mix of genetic traits is more likely to pop out, as if nature rewards, or favours, the mixing of different gene pools - which would tally with the aim of not mixing family genetics.
I followed a reading trail on this a few years back, which led to some articles, which described also in certain genetic interstitial areas, certain issues cropped up more frequently.
Anyhows, genetically, all sorts of bubbling on happens with mixes.
It’s called heterosis or hybrid vigour.
1 Like
Love it. “Hybrid vigour”. That’s obviously what I’ve got, being of Irish / British descent. Hybrid vigour.
Thanks!
Good to see him clearing that issue up for us. It’s not OK to call Richard Cohen racist, because that’s just offensive and hurtful. On the other hand, it’s quite reasonable for him to call “conventional” people racist, because he knows that they are just about managing to keep their dinner down whenever they pass a couple with different colours of skin.
Bah, if you don’t have any Scottish in you then I don’t see how you have vigour!
1 Like
It’s the mad Oirish bit.
I don’t think anyone means anything good by racism, so your multiple definitions are nit-picking.
But in any case, no, that’s not what conventional means. Conventions are commonly-agreed standards or practices. Revulsion (or any emotional response) at mixed-race marriage is not a convention. Only a tiny minority of people have an explicit argued position against mixed-race marriage, and those people are fuckwits: their position is rejected by science, theology and common sense. It could only be described as conventional within a tiny isolated community of inbreeders: not New York.
Anyway, it’s beside the point whether Cohen is himself definable as a racist. The problem is he’s a poor writer: bullshitting wildly, attributing horrible racist attitudes to vague categories of people only identified by an inaccurate use of the word “conventional”, and then denying all responsibility but loving the controversy.
If you knew a prick like that personally, you would weary of their endless self-satisfied shit pretty quickly, I’m sure.
I don’t agree that the difference between ideology and vaguely-defined personal preferences is nit-picking. An ideology includes a program for material action and in the case of ideologies based on hatred strongly implies malevolent intention and often realized actions – examples being the Holocaust and Jim Crow. ‘Irrational’ preferences may add up to an oppressive social context, but until they become ideologized they usually don’t materialize as death camps.
One of the reasons I dislike seeing the term ‘racism’ thrown around so freely is that it is often simply a case of ‘any stick will do to beat a dog.’ It is permissible to hate racists, however they are defined, so those who feel an urge to abuse someone or something are fond of picking it up and putting it to use. Thus we have Republicans saying Affirmative Action is racist, and we have numerous politicians, media people, and academics who construe any disagreement with them as ‘racist’ because they claim to be members of a minority or speak for them. This practice, which has become very widespread, obscures the very real problems of invidious tribalism which we supposedly want to mitigate or do away with.
Speaking of which, in matters of sex and marriage, besides race, I have observed differences of age, religion, political philosophy, party, ethnicity, family history, language, dialect, class, educational level, disability, illness, weight, geographical location, cultural group, aesthetic taste, manners, dress, and so on, to occasion the most vigorous and stringent sanctions against boundary violators even among highly intelligent, supposedly liberal people. I knew of one person whose friends dropped him because he took up with a Jehovah’s Witness, for instance. And it is completely permissible to deride and exclude the young who date the old and vice versa – this is quite overt. I’m sure I don’t need to go on. I doubt if many of the enlightened people here are completely innocent of this sort of thing given its popularity and ubiquity.
1 Like
… then again, think of the pizza.
I agree that it is pretty easy to attack someone with a charge of racism. Usually it’s better to say that someone said something racist or did something racist than that they are racist. So maybe we should say that Mr. Cohen’s column is racist rather than that Mr. Cohen is racist.
But I don’t think leaving racism out of the picture does justice to the situation. Mr. Cohen’s comment supports racist sentiment by denying that a group of people are racist with one breath and then suggesting that they would gag at an inter-racial marriage in the next. If someone who gags an inter-racial marriage isn’t necessarily a racist, we could certainly say that they display a very racist impulse.
To compare inter-racial marriage to inter-religious marriage or inter-generational marriage exposes why it is problematic. If you ask those people who quit your friend why they did it, they would likely tell you that Jehova’s Witnesses are nuts and it was crazy of him to take up with one. If you ask people why they think inter-generational marriage is wrong they will tell you that those marriages seem exploitative. Maybe people are have a prejudice against Jehova’s Witnesses and maybe people have strong age-based biases as well, but that is precisely the point! If a person thinks that black people shouldn’t marry white people, it is probably because they have a bias against either black or white people.
Probably, almost everyone is biased. The important question for me is whether they make an ideology out of it, that is, concoct a system of ideas for enforcing their biases politically. Age prejudice is overt, almost universal, virulent, and fairly destructive, but I haven’t seen anyone suggest that old people should be exterminated or locked up, so I would not call it an ideology.
That some people have a visceral reaction to a violation of the boundaries set by their prejudices is unfortunate, but as I said it seems to apply to a lot of categories. Many people struggle with the problem. As, of course, does our whole society and many others.
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
