COVERING UP RACISM

[Charles Brown]

Ambiguity and slipperines don't make racism today not racism. Black and Brown people don't think because racism is "ambiguous and slippery", i.e. devious and sneaky, hidden and COVERED UP, that it is thereby NOT racism. When you say somebody "refuses to see the ambiguity and slipperiness of racism on the part of whites in this country", it sounds like you mean Black and Brown people in some sense "don't get " the "subtleties" or new features of racism. If so, let me assure you the targets of racism get all the subtlties, ambiguities and slipperinesses of racism better than all the intellectuals who think they have some more sophisticated understanding of it. Furthermore, "ambiguity" and "slipperiness" are exactly the hiddeness or COVERUP that I am talking about. An ambiguous expression of racism is just a way of giving oneself "plausible denial" . For the target of the "ambiguous" or "slippery" racism the ambiguity or slipperiness doesn't make it less pernicious. 

Charles Brown


>>> <EmaChissit at cs.com> 05/01/99 12:04PM >>>
kayak3 at bouldernews.infi.net writes:


> The members of the TM may have somehow been
>  racists to some degree but you seem to be over reacting to a story that
>  sounds very credible. You offer no evidence to back up your claim that
>  this is "virulent racism." Why don't we try to stick to what we can
>  verify as the truth instead of jumping to wild speculation just to make
>  an argument. 

Hi,

It was a moment of hyperbole, of sarcasm.  I posted the story and I think it 
quite credible.  The caps were meant to highlight that it was sarcasm.  Doug 
had nothing to do with it and was offended by what I'd posted because it was, 
rather subtly, an attack on those who refuse to see the ambiguity and 
slipperiness of racism on the part of whites in this country.

Emma