Why I Love Ray Bradbury
“I often use the metaphor of Perseus and the head of Medusa when I speak of science fiction. Instead of looking into the face of truth, you look over your shoulder into the bronze surface of a reflecting shield. Then you reach back with your sword and cut off the head of Medusa. Science fiction pretends to look into the future but it’s really looking at a reflection of what is already in front of us. So you have a ricochet vision, a ricochet that enables you to have fun with it, instead of being self-conscious and superintellectual.”
– From this interview here. Man, I hope Ray lives forever, I really do.
What Is A Racist? Tell Me, Tell Me, If You Think You Know
WARNING: There is no objectively correct answer to the question I am about to raise. There are only personal answers, rooted deeply in scars and society, that turn out to be unsatisfying when you overlay them with everyone else’s answers. If you think there’s one approach, you are wrong. This is dangerous territory. Please keep all hands and feet inside the vehicle.
I’ve had racist thoughts. So have you. Oh, some of you would prefer to think why I never, that you’re above that sort of thing – but really, it’s impossible to walk into this mire and mass of complex culture without stepping on it once in a while. Chances are good you’ve even expressed racist sentiments. Possibly without even understanding that they are racist.
Yet here’s the thing: at some point, once you’ve expressed enough racist sentiments – and that tipping point differs for every single human being on the planet, a unique and crazed individuality – you move beyond “acting racist” and become “a racist,” which is an incomplete statement.
The full phrasing is “a racist piece of shit.” Once you pass the area of “occasionally being racist” to “a racist,” all your thoughts are suspect. A racist may occasionally be right on something, but it’s in that stopped-clock-is-right-twice-a-day fashion where you’ve stumbled upon the correct answer via an incoherent set of crazed half-logic jumps that don’t make any real sense. Becoming “a racist” means that you can be safely ignored.
Except that weirdly, being “a racist” seems to be something that springs from the heart. You’ll see debates on people who’ve said something extremely stupidly racist, trying to determine whether they’re just acting racist or are racists. Often you’ll see heartfelt pleas from people, claiming that they know this person and they know that s/he’s not a racist because they’ve spent time with them and they are this race, and they know that while s/he has made grievous errors, perhaps repeatedly over the course of decades, they’re not a racist.
So “a racist” often seems to be something that springs from intent. You can act in a lot of racist ways, but your heart means well, and though you have had moments of enabling and propagating racism (as, I stress, we all do), your purity of spirit means that you have not crossed that line into “a-racist-ville.”
…maybe. Or maybe not.
All we know is that almost nobody in mainstream culture wants to be a racist, and it’s a shame that the English language draws such a shoddy distinction between “acting racist” and “being a racist,” because if you accuse someone of being a racist, they will often go fucking berserk. (If you accuse them of being racist they’ll often go berserk because that’s one step down that thorned path to being a racist, and they know they’re better than that and HOW DARE YOU.)
The reason I bring all of this up is because there were some reactions to my post yesterday on Ron Paul, mainly “ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING, FERRETT? A PERSON WHO UTILIZES THE EXISTING LIES ABOUT MINORITIES TO GET AHEAD IS MUST BE A RACIST.” Which, as I said in the opening warning, is a completely valid viewpoint. Perhaps becoming a racist isn’t in the heart, but in the deeds. While there are certainly any number of politicians who’d be willing to sell out anyone, regardless of race or creed or class, in order to get into power, perhaps the ones who have used their leverage to shit on the little guy have crossed into a-racist-ville regardless of what’s under the hood.
Or maybe not. The problem with all of this roiling stew is that everyone has their own personal definition of when someone stops “acting racist” and becomes “a racist,” and if you’re too kind then nobody’s a racist and the term has no meaning at all, and if you’re too quick to judge then everyone on the planet is a racist, and trying to determine when (or if) someone’s deeds begin to reflect their personal intention is such a crazy cluster of personal judgment that nobody can separate it to the satisfaction of everyone else.
So are those politicians I discussed yesterday racist – or, rather, are they each a racist? Or are they just such piece-of-shit human beings that they’re not in fact racist, but enabled such racially horrid laws and rhetoric that they somehow wind up lower than racists because they’re hollow-hearted assholes who’ll say whatever it takes to get elected? How many flavors of asshole do we want to distinguish among before we just lump them all together as one shitty hole we shouldn’t sit underneath?
Nobody knows. And everybody knows. But everybody knows in their own way, and often are not just astonished but enraged that anyone else could have a different definition. And they’re often right to be astonished and enraged. And that’s just one facet of why all this race stuff is so goddamned complicated.
Ron Paul And The Racist Rednecks
“You know, I tried to talk about good roads and good schools and all these things that have been part of my career, and nobody listened. And then I began talking about niggers, and they stomped the floor.”
Ta-Nehisi Coates has a great (and rather chilling) article on how potentially non-racist politicians have used racist policies to get elected. Which is kind of terrifying. When you have statements like, “Seymore, you know why I lost that governor’s race?… I was outniggered by John Patterson. And I’ll tell you here and now, I will never be outniggered again,” then what you have is a terrifying portrait of democracy: a public so angry and discriminatory that the only way to get votes is to whip up public sentiment.
And I think it’s important to draw a distinction here between “racists” and “opportunists.” When Ron Paul says shit like, “Given the inefficiencies of what DC laughingly calls the criminal justice system, I think we can safely assume that 95 percent of the black males in that city are semi-criminal or entirely criminal,” he may not be a racist. A racist would at least have the courage of his convictions. An opportunist, on the other hand, sees that if he kicks a group of people who he holds no personal malice towards, he can gain personal power – and starts kicking these innocents in order to be better liked.
I’m sickened by the hundreds of thousands of douchebag racists who only get thrilled when their politician is hammering on the gays or the Muslims or the nigras. But I’m even more sickened by the idea that someone would go, “Well, aside from contributing to the deaths and torment of a bunch of people I have no problem with, I think I can do a lot of good here.” Which is, sadly, what I think Ron Paul is when you peel back the surface.
Random Questions And Links And, Oh Yeah, Your Best Song
Random links.
1) Regarding yesterday’s love post, I note my wife was kind enough to create a love thread for me. I note this because I am an attention whore.
2) Seriously, how cool is it that there’s a Jedi Training Camp for kids? Registration’s still open for slots in February, and if I had a kid nearby to Texas, I’d be sending him off. (And bonus points for not using the term Padawan.)
3) Spotify is really opening up musical horizons for me. I do love being able to listen to any song on the year’s-best lists to see whether I’m impressed or not. So I’ll ask you one question:
What was your favorite song in 2011?
You choose only one. Seriously. If you can’t choose one, I’ll boot you. I’m looking for new music, but don’t wanna be drowned in suggestions. And no, the song doesn’t have to be made in 2011, I’m just curious as to what your favorite song was that you found this year.
If I had to choose one, it’d probably be the Dartmouth Aires’ cover of “Club Can’t Handle Me Right Now” (skip to 2:56 to see it and skip the intro). Seriously. It’s insanely sweet, and as an acapella song it’s just pure beauty. That last note is just…. mmm.
(I have other songs that might be contenders, but I can play by my own rules.)
I'm At theferrett@theferrett.com. Still.
Dude. I’m right here. You know where I am?
theferrett@theferrett.com.
That’s the email address I’ve used for a decade, and it’s easily available in a zillion places. I know, because spammers seem to find it wherever their malicious little robots roam. If you need to contact me, please do so there.
The reason I say this is because people keep messaging me on LJ and Facebook in their attempts to contact me, and it doesn’t work. I don’t even like Facebook, so I check it periodically in the same way you check that bit of moldy leftovers at the back of the fridge. Messages there can languish for months at a time. Likewise, LJ messages may likewise sit in stasis for weeks.
Then I feel bad, because someone emails me to go, “I HAVE A BONE STUCK IN MY THROAT AND MY OXYGEN SEEMS TO BE DWINDLING, DO YOU HAVE ADVICE?” and then I don’t see it until July.
I know Facebook and LJ and all of the other social networking sites want to replace your email because then they’ll be your viewpoint to the world and you’ll be shackled to their snazzy email system… But I don’t work that way. The other social networks are an inconvenience for me, and as such their friendly attempts to replace mostly-working systems with their ad-choked and annoying bits.
I don’t want to have to go to Facebook in the first place. So please. Don’t make me.
Now, I can understand using a social network when you don’t know where to contact someone otherwise, but I’m telling you my details so you don’t have to. Hell, leave a comment on my blog. And Lord knows I can be sporadic with email, too, but at least then I’ll see it and feel guilty. Contacting me via Facebook message is like condemning it to Purgatory – a nebulous, wandering place where they languish until an unspecified freedom date.
I beg thee. Mail may not be your friend, but it is mine. Send it on, man.
A Long Tradition Of Love, Dying
As LiveJournal fades, I still miss certain traditions. Namely, the love posts.
It’s a sweet habit that I’ve seen others do, but Shadowwolf13 does the most often – someone starts a post that says, “Start a thread for people to say nice things about someone else on LiveJournal, and I’ll maintain the threads so someone can come here and see all the compliments left for them.”
The maintaining is a pain in the butt. You have to constantly redo the post to list all of the people, and folks start multiple threads for the same person, and it really is a lot of overhead. But it’s a way of making people feel better on a holiday, and it’s a tradition unique to LJ as far as I know, and I feel bad because once the English side of LJ goes, it will be no more.
So she’s put a new Love Thread up today, and I’ve already left threads for my sweeties, who really deserve some awesome love always. Shadowwolf is a patient wonder for doing this, and this year seems light on love, so please – if you’re still on LJ, I encourage you to go leave love for someone and put breadcrumbs so others can find it.
A little love this season is never a bad thing.