>>> Wojtek Sokolowski <sokol at jhu.edu> 06/03/99 02:17PM >>>
At 12:54 PM 6/3/99 -0400, Henry wrote:
>What genuine claims? You lampooned a style of writing because it did
>not sound like persuasive English just because it was literally
>translated from Chinese, a very formal language your ignorance of which
>did not prevent you from concluding the content to be intellectually
>inferior. That is language racism. You are the worst kind of racist,
>one who does not know he is one while going around pretending to be a
>progressive person. And you crude attempt to put a distance between CB
-- snip --
Hold you horses, Henry. I thing many things can be said of Max, but "racist" is not one of them. Even if there is a serious misunderstanding of some cultural diffrences on the part of some of us, as you claim, I do not think this sort of ad hominem will effectively resolve the problem. Au contraire, it will make things worse. We are here to bridge such misunderstandings, not to deepen them, no?
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Charles: I think, Wojtek, here you make one of the typical errors of this period's plausible denial of racism. The term "racist" is not over used , but under used today. There are mild forms of racism that should be called racist, because the great mass of milder forms of racism underpin the more virulent forms as a system. Accusing someone of racism is not "ad hominem". It is the political critique of the expression of a SOCIAL phenomenon ,which of course, is only expressed in the conduct of individuals, but remains social. "Ad hominem" is name calling. The effort to categorize most uses of "racist" and "racism" as namecalling is one of the most egregious forms of post-Reaganite plausible denial of racism. It is sort of like saying the terms "reactionary" or "conservative" are ad hominem.
Racism is rife in the U.S. Use of the terms "racism" or "racist" more frequently would more accurately reflect reality.
Racism is a social, not psychological phenonmenon, so we are not talking about psychotherapy groups here. Racism is integral to the U.S. capitalist system. To end capitalism we must substantially abate racism.
Charles Brown
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As to the "language racism" - there is a substantial difference between Chinese and Western styles of expression, and many Chinese ellipses or metaphors may indeed sound odd when translated verbatim into English (or any other indo-european language). as i said before, i happen to live in china for two years during the cultural revolution, and the first thing i noticed was translations of the revolutionary literature - which appeared to me as odd at best and sometimes even comic. it took me considerable time to realize that the oddity was created essentially by the translation problems between two culturally different styles.
needless to say that misundersandings of that nature were not limited to linguistic expressions. i recall a rather serious diplomatic incident over a seemingly trivial issue involving post stamps. someone sent a letter putting the stamps (50+2 'cents') in a wrong order - the 50 'cent' stamp showing the bust of Chariman Mao was affixed to the wrong side of the 2 'cent' stamp showing an archer -- to the effect that the arrow seemed to point at the chairman. when the issue was brought up by the chinese side, our side saw it as a bad joke and dismissed it altogether, that of course exacerbated the whole problem even further to the point that the ambassador had to intervene to resolve it.
so the bottom line is that there are unavoidable cultural differences and misperceptions that do not necessarily imply racism or bigotry. nor do ad hominems help resolving these differences and misunderstandings.
wojtek