#CancelColbert, Offense, and Proper Reactions

Late last week, Stephen Colbert had a bit mocking Daniel Snyder, owner of the Washington professional football team (you know, the one with a racial slur for a team name). As you may have heard, Snyder has established the Original Americans Foundation, one of the most blatant PR moves in history, in which he's supplied some coats and the portion of the cost of one backhoe, to a few tribal groups in order to try to paper over the fact his team is named a racial slur (note: the charity is not named the Redskins Foundation, almost as if Snyder understands it's not a word one should be using).

In his patented way, Colbert mocked this by doing his own faux-racist schtick, claiming to start the Ching Chong Ding Dong Foundation for Sensitivity to Orientals or Whatever (go watch the clip for why this makes sense in context -- in fact, the context is extremely, extremely important).

The bit was classic Colbert -- taking a ridiculous position and pushing it only slightly further to demonstrate how incredibly stupid that position is. Having watched the clip as it first aired, it could not have been more obvious the butt of the joke was Snyder and his hypocritical cashing in on a racist slur while trying to buy his way out of it. It was similarly obvious that Asian people were not being made fun of, but merely serving as a contrast to show how we wouldn't accept Snyder's racist shenanigans with any other ethnic group (why we accept it against natives is an entirely different post).

The problem came when the show's official twitter feed (not run by Colbert or anyone working on the show) tweeted out the name of the satirical foundation completely out of context. And out of context, it does seem pretty damn offensive. This led noted twitter activist Suey Park to call for the cancellation of the Colbert Report and made the hashtag #cancelcolbert trend.

And that, as this excellent commentary notes, is when the shit hit the fan. Especially as a number of people who had no idea of the context of the joke hopped on the bandwagon.

And here's where things get thorny for me. I'm very much of the school that holds it's condescending and basically an asshole move to tell someone they have no right to be offended by something (especially when you add the layer of race in, as a white dude I have no place telling a person of color something isn't racist and they should't be offended by it). This is both because a) emotions themselves are never "wrong," it's how you react to them, but more importantly 2) the thornier issues of status and privilege and all that.

Though while I'm never comfortable telling someone they should not be offended, I also have a problem with the blanket assumption that one's offense trumps all else (again, I'm typically on board with that position, just not as an absolute). Because this situation reminds me a great deal of a time I was googling around to see if there were any fun, short readings from popular media about the police subculture for a class I was teaching. There ended up being a link for a policeone message board, which are always humorous, so I decided to check it out (policeone is a news and quasi-social media site for law enforcement).

Anyway, someone had posted a message asking if anyone on there had good info on the police subculture for a continuing ed course they were taking. Another poster took extreme offense to this, writing something to the effect of "How dare you say the police are a subculture? We're not sub anything! Why don't you take your hatred of law enforcement elsewhere!"

So obviously that person was offended, but this starts to veer into the territory where they were empirically wrong to be offended. Because for the two of you out there who don't know the term, "subculture" is not a term that implies any judgement (positive or negative). It simply refers to a smaller culture that exists within a larger culture. Not only does the "sub" mean "smaller than" not "lesser than," but it's also a pretty widespread term that any American adult should have heard of and know. So while we may not be able to say that person was wrong to be offended, it's also pretty clear that person was in the wrong -- not only was no offensive thing actually written, but even a cursory google search for the meaning of the term would have let that person know what they were interpreting as offensive was actually a completely value-free term applied to widely disparate groups.

Where it gets tricky is that exact last point -- what responsibility does the offended party have? To bring it back to the Colbert example (which is admittedly much thornier than someone not knowing what the word subculture means), Park mentioned in her initial tweet that she was a fan of Colbert. Which means she has to be aware that his whole schtick is playing a clueless right-wing extremist in the mold of the Limbaughs and O'Reillys of the world. So seeing that (admittedly much more offensive out of context) tweet, she could have easily surmised that rather than Colbert suddenly turning unapologetically racist, maybe there was some context to what was going on (as if the "or whatever" at the end of it didn't indicate this was satire). And if you actually do watch the clip in context, it was so clear the butt of the joke is Snyder and the racism of the team name that they may as well have been running a disclaimer at the bottom of the screen reading "WARNING: this is satire. Obviously no one here believes these derogatory stereotypes of Asians. They are being deployed to illustrate how unacceptable racism against Natives is." But obviously Park (nor the many others making the hashtag trend) bothered to check in on that context. Context which completely changes the joke.

But this just brings us back to the beginning and how hard these things are to weigh -- is it me being a clueless white guy saying "no, person of color, you don't get to be offended by what the white guy said," or is it an example of someone almost willfully ignoring the context of what was said, taking offense at something clearly not doing what they claim it to be (that is, mocking Asian people)? Or can it be both?

To quote the authors of the commentary linked to above (who, like Park, both happen to be Americans of Korean descent), Park's reading of this "flattens out all meaning and pretends, in effect, that there is no ironic distance between Jonathan Swift's satire and actual cannibalism." I like that comparison quite a bit -- obviously Swift was not at all advocating the eating of Irish babies. But not being Irish myself, were I to happen upon an Irish person who found Swift incredibly offensive for suggesting such a ghastly act, would/could/should I point out it really seems they're really misinterpreting the story?

Because You Need This

From our friends at Slate, here is every hairstyle Prince has had from 1978 to 2013.

This, my friends, is why the internet exists.

Dog Whistle Racism Explained By An Insider

On the heels of writing about racial coding and dog whistle racism in America, I happened to read this article about Paul Ryan trying to backtrack from his assertion that all poverty stems from Black people being lazy (or something like that, it's kind of hard to follow his logic).

But more to the point, the piece uses a fantastic quote I'd been trying to dig up for a while from Alexander P. Lamis' book "The Two-Party South." At the time the book was published (1984) the quote was simply from an anonymous source identified as a Reagan confident, but is now known to be famed conservative operative Lee Atwater. It's especially important because often people who discuss racial coding are accused of reading too much into the words used, or projecting their own ideas on to the speaker.

But this quote from Atwater is not someone interpreting his words, or projecting words on to him, it's just him straight-up explaining exactly how Republicans have intentionally used racially coded language to make racist appeals to their white, Souther voting base while maintaining the plausible deniability of supposedly not talking about race.

But enough with the set up, here's Atwater in his own words:

"You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘N—-r, n—-r, n—-r.’ By 1968 you can’t say ‘n—-r’ — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I’m not saying that. But I’m saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, ‘We want to cut this,’ is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than ‘N—-r, n—-r.'"

So no, when Ryan and his ilk talk of "inner city laziness" and the need to stop "fostering dependance on government assistance," social scientists are not "reading too much into it" when we note that these are obviously racist statements designed to rile up racist white voters. All we're doing is saying in public what Atwater was more than comfortable admitting behind closed doors...

I Do Not Think That Word Means What You Think It Means

I often joke that you can tell when a conservative is discussing the Middle East, because they suddenly turn into radical feminists. Sure, they hate abortion, pass restrictive legislation limiting access to birth control, underfund women's health initiatives, mock rape victims, and generally believe women to be sub-human baby incubators. But when discussion turns to anywhere the people are brown, all of a sudden we Have to Save the Women™!

Of course, they don't care about Middle Eastern women (or men or children), but it's become unacceptable to publicly say they're a worthless people and we can kill them and take over their nations anytime we like. So instead, suddenly these folks are really concerned about women's rights (but only over there).

A corollary to that joke is that anytime a conservative invokes Freedom of Speech™, it is a very safe bet some prominent conservative has just been fired for saying something incredibly racist, sexist, homophobic, etc.

Which brings me to this picture currently floating around the interwebs:

It's a picture of a bunch of supposed historical re-enactors, dressed up like Nazis, having a dinner party in a private room of Minneapolis restaurant Gasthof zur Gemutlichkeit, complete with Nazi banners and other regalia strewn about (on MLK day, for an added bonus).

I'm not even going to touch how idiotic that is, as any functioning human adult can immediately understand why this is a terrible idea. Rather, I want to focus on the comments of the owner of the restaurant (which have been echoed by several of the Nazis in the photo) aimed at the people criticizing him for hosting the event:

"We live in a free country...but from the comments I see, a lot of people they don’t see what freedom is."

Except…no. The constitutionally guaranteed right to free speech specifically prevents the government (or more specifically, anyone acting on behalf of the government) to censor one's speech or activities without compelling reason. Since not a single one of the people in this photo, in the group, or employed by the restaurant has been subject to any government action as a result of this, it means their freedoms are perfectly intact.

So repeat it with me kids: freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences.

So while no one has the right to prevent you from being the kind of fucking moron who thinks dressing up and playing Nazi is a fun thing to do, everyone has the complete right to tell you you're a fucking jackass for doing so. That's not them imposing limits on your freedom of speech, that's them exercising their freedom of speech.

A violation of your free speech would be if the police had prevented the dinner in the first place, or arrested them all afterward. And if that happened, as much as I loathe these people, I'd be first in line to defend them. But that didn't happen; they are all currently walking about freely with no chance of criminal conviction stemming from this. That is why I'm also happy to be right in line to tell them they are horrible people who need to seriously re-evaluate their life choices.

But whether it be dressing up like Nazis, or telling a national publication that Black people were happier under segregation and gay people are an abomination, conservatives seem to believe that any criticism of their words or actions is automatically illegal censorship (quite ironic given their love for censorship in every other arena, but that's another topic for another day). Apparently, to them, freedom of speech means everyone not only has to let you speak, they have to listen to you speak, and have to then agree with whatever you said.

But that's not how it works. You've got your freedom of speech to dress up like the people who slaughtered at least 6 million human beings and have a grand ol' time being a giant asshole. But everyone else has the freedom to tell you you're a giant asshole.

I'll let the last word go to Dr. Degrasse Tyson. While it's on a different subject, the general principle remains the same:

Spring Break! Whooo!

Don't forget to pound those shots and find a tasteful font for your wedding invites

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How Racism Works in the 21st Century

A problem in discussing racism (or most any social problem) is that most people's understanding of what it is and how it works is woefully outdated. For instance, I wrote awhile back on this very blog about the incredibly racist reaction to Adrian Peterson finding out he had a son he didn't know about when the child was tragically murdered. Someone (my favorite stalker?) commented that since race was never directly mentioned in the the discussion of AP, I was obviously inventing what I wanted to see. This is actually a pretty common criticism from people who understand nothing about how race works, somewhat like I imagine it must have been trying to convince people the earth rotated around the sun and not the other way around (after all, I see the sun come up every morning and go down every night!!! This is just another example of librul, PC fascists trying to jam their heliocentric world view down our God-fearing throats!).

But as always, it doesn't take long for the next perfect example of this process to come along. You may have already heard about Minnesota State House of Representatives member Pat Garofalo (Rep) tweeting: "Let's be honest, 70% of teams in NBA could fold tomorrow + nobody would notice a difference w/ possible exception of increase in street crime" (not included, the implied hashtags of #Imnotaracisbut and #Ihaveblackfriends).

This is a classic example of what we social scientists call "racially coded" language (or in layman's terms, dog whistle politics). Such coded language is used because of the strides we have made as a society in addressing racism; it's no longer at all acceptable publicly to say that Black people commit all crime (at least not in most places). But there's clearly a lot of people who still believe that (factually inaccurate as it may be), but know they can't say that. So they have to find a way to say it to each to each other, but in a way with plausible deniability built in. So they use codes they understand but which on their face are not controversial or racist.

"States rights" is a great example of this. In an entirely apocryphal justification for the civil war (invented decades after the actual war was fought), those defending slavery have invented this alternate explanation for why the Confederacy was right to do what they did. Because again, while plenty of people still clearly don't view Black Americans as anywhere near their equals, they know that publicly praising slavery is a faux pas. But saying they believe the federal government has too much power and they believe states should be able to set their own laws isn't racist, it's just a preference in governance. Never mind this hatred for federal intervention stems from the federal government intervening to say they can't own other human beings, that's just a coincidence. Just like the Confederacy didn't secede because of slavery (though someone should tell that to the Confederates themselves, given how often they spoke about defending the institution of slavery); no, apparently the Confederacy seceded and engaged in the bloodiest war in our nation's history because they were concerned about the proper balance of power between intra-governmental bodies. Because if there's one thing that inspires millions of people to revolt, it's matters of bureaucratic jurisdiction!

So how does this relate to an idiot state Congressman's racist tweet? Well, as Kyle Wagner points out over at Regressing, the tweet doesn't make sense if you take it at it's supposedly non-racist face. Wagner goes into a lot more detail in the article, but his half-assed graph here does the best job telling the story while giving that idiotic argument as much respect as it deserves:

So as you can see, NBA players actually commit crime at a much lower level than the A) the general public, B) the general public of Minnesota (where Garofalo unfortunately serves), and C) comparable men in their age group. In fact, there were only a single-digit number of arrests of NBA players last year. Now, of course, arrest data is far from a perfect measure of criminal activity, but it's the only one we've got here. Besides, the number of crimes committed by NBA players is so low, that even if you assume they're somehow getting away with 2 or 3 times as many crimes, they're still not committing much crime compared to the general public, and definitely not nearly as much crime as other men their age.

So again, the tweet makes no sense viewed from reality. But it makes a ton of sense when viewed racially: the NBA is by far the "blackest" sports league in America (the only majority African-American sport). What Rep. Garofalo meant was not that NBA players commit a lot of crime (because they empirically don't), but that black people commit a lot of crime (even though, empirically-speaking, they don't either). So instead of saying "black people are responsible for most crimes" (which would be obviously racist), he says "NBA players commit the most crime" (which he can then try to explain away as not racist with an explanation that makes even less sense than the tweet). In fact, even his walking it back shows the racism underlying the tweet -- when contacted about how he was wrong re: the arrest rates, Garofalo claimed it was somehow about the NBA having the most lax pro sports policy toward marijuana (which again, it turns out, is factually incorrect).

This is why "seeing" the racism in this tweet and other such communications is not "reading too much into it," because there's no other way to read it. If you take it at face value, it means this state rep does not have the intellectual capacities of a child. So either he is monumentally stupid, or as Occam's razor would have it, he knew exactly what he was saying.

Or to put it in a way Rep. Garofalo can understand, he seems like he's lost a lot of weight lately. I just read that people who get addicted to meth and turn to prostitution to fund their drug habits tend to lose a lot of weight quickly. But I said nothing about Rep. Garofalo being a meth-addicted prostitute...

Busy Week

No time to blog what with all the work I need to get done. But I'm still here for you -- check out this sweet virtual theramin.

There, I've just filled your entire afternoon...

Monday's Good News: Keep Rocking Out

I've had ear problems more-or-less since birth, but they were undoubtedly greatly exacerbated by spending most of college in dingy garages listening to hardcore bands. While amazingly never perishing in a fire in a wooden structure with way too many extension cords being used and far too many people inside a place with only one exit that opened inward, I did manage to shred my eardrums pretty well.

Despite being fully aware that such repeated exposure to loud noises in a confined space is basically begging for non-reversible hearing damage, I didn't care due to a combination of the complete lack of caring about the future particular to the college-aged and of course the fact that hardcore garage shows are super cool and I was far from super cool, so I certainly wasn't going to stop doing the one cool thing I could do.

And although I've long since accepted the fact that I'll be functionally deaf by 50, it turns out all hope may not be lost, as a team of neuroscientists have successfully reversed hearing loss in rats. The short version is that loud noises damage the sensory hair cells of the inner ear, which are among the bodily maladies our sacks of meat and blood can't fix on their own. But through suppressing a specific protein, this team has been able to allow stem cells to regenerate said sensory hairs.

Of course, any breakthrough in rats is a long way away from an application fit for humans, but it's a hell of a first step. But hey, human application can't be more than a decade or so away, right? Which is good, because I've recently discovered BABYMETAL and have been listening to their delightfully absurd mix of J-Pop and sludgy riff-metal at top volume for days…