The Race Paradigm

[Mumbles]

In the sketch he's playing 3 people, all of whom he's calling racist. He's saying racist things in character in order to highlight unconscious prejudices and the issue that there is more racism around than there would be if we didn't live in a society which had rules of etiquette. In order to play these characters, Chapelle himself is putting on voices. It's not the characters he's playing who are putting on those voices, it's Chapelle.

But the entire point is that *everything* he says on stage is coming from a character. A character based on the real Dave Chapelle, yes, but it's still a character that is deliberately distorted in order to be funny, often by mocking racism and racist stereotypes. The entire reason for the Korean storeowner to even be in the joke is that there *is* a nugget of truth to it - not in the stereotype, but in the fact that black and Asian people in the same area can often be remarkably hostile to one another - see the LA Riots following the Rodney King verdict.

I think I can see where you're getting hung up, though. Both Chapelle and Chris Rock have often discussed that there's a certain part of their audience that is openly racist, and rather than laughing *at* the stereotypes that the two mean to be ridiculous, they find them to be true, and so laugh along *with* them. And they've both found this to be troublesome at best. You seem to be the flip side of those people - you find this particular joke to be actual racism, but instead of laughing, you're offended by it.

*shrug* I think I'm about done arguing this. If you don't agree with my first paragraph, then we are simply seeing his set from two fundamentally different angles, and that's the end of it. I can respect your view, but I still think you are ultimately wrong. And, as you've said, this is minor.

 

[angrysoba]

We get it angrysoba, everytime I write something you have to make a comment on it. LOL

Projection your honour! I was not remarking on you specifically. A few posters, not just you, misinterpreted SB. But if you recognize that you misinterpreted SB, as your post suggests, then it's all good, as Bob Dylan would say.

No the fact that SB stated that Chappelle did not use a "black voice" for the "black character" is part of the distinction here that is causing the confusion.

If you listen to Chappelle talking in his regular voice and then listen to how he speaks in the "black guy" voice, he CLEARLY puts on an accent as well. Chappelle has a southern accent normally. Not a "black accent." Dismissing that is what caused the confusion.

Listen to it again:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8fkv1UQcPg


You can see him in an interview here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8vCr2tZa_8

I think it is important to remember a well-known observation in sociolinguistics of convergent assimilation and code-switching when it comes to dialects and accents. In many cases people don't have only one accent or dialect; they speak differently according to the audience or people around them. We all do this as research from the likes of William Labov and Walt Wolfram onwards has demonstrated.

 

[truethat]

You cannot possible know this. Whereas I -- for one -- recognize that race is a false ideology, I cannot act or think in any way that derives from racialism -- the mere recognition of race as a valid concept -- much less from racism -- the desire to oppress or treat as inferior a member of a hated group. I don't acknowledge such groupings as valid, so I cannot and do not act from impulses associated with that line of thinking.



I don't want to pretend any such thing; you're now mischaracterizing me because you don't appear to understand my premise. You've crafted a simplistic straw man -- "Just don't do it" -- whereas my actual proposal is that we begin to work towards weeding out the recognition of race as a valid concept from our enculuration process. Teach your kids that race does not exist. Tell your neighbors race does not exist. Make it an internet meme. Get the word out there. Shout it from rooftops, paint it on murals. Start a national dialogue about it. Fly it on a flag. In time, under this new paradigm, the old idea of race will fall away, and with it racism.

No it won't. That's the problem. It's too easy to fall back on it. I mean you could possibly make the argument that in the future because so many people are biracial that the concept of race will somewhat fall away. But basically it would be so far into the future as to be irrelevant.

When race IS identifiable people revert to it.

I think an interesting consideration for your perspective would be to talk to a family where one of the children is much more ethnic looking than the other.

Funny, my oldest son is very dark. People often don't think I'm his mother. He looks 100 percent Egyptian. The other looks like Leonardo DiCaprio.

If you asked them who has experienced the most racism, the one who doesn't look Arabic is more angry and frustrated by racist comments because people don't realize that he is Arabic so they say things in front of him that they would never dare say in front of my other son.

That's why I keep trying to get you to consider "microaggression" or "unconscious racism"

Btw, I often use the term "you" as a general statement. Don't always assume I mean you specifically.

But as to the idea of eradicating race, it's a bit weird to try to strip people of their identity and pretend it doesn't matter when it obviously does matter.

 

[truethat]

Projection your honour! I was not remarking on you specifically. A few posters, not just you, misinterpreted SB. But if you recognize that you misinterpreted SB, as your post suggests, then it's all good, as Bob Dylan would say.



I think it is important to remember a well-known observation in sociolinguistics of convergent assimilation and code-switching when it comes to dialects and accents. In many cases people don't have only one accent or dialect; they speak differently according to the audience or people around them. We all do this as research from the likes of William Labov and Walt Wolfram onwards has demonstrated.

The fact that you posted this, about a video where it is not only blatantly obvious what the comedian was doing, but the comedian himself explains exactly what he is doing in the video is so gut bustingly funny to me it's shocking.

LMFAO

 

[Vortigern99]

No it won't. That's the problem. It's too easy to fall back on it. I mean you could possibly make the argument that in the future because so many people are biracial that the concept of race will somewhat fall away. But basically it would be so far into the future as to be irrelevant.

When race IS identifiable people revert to it.

I think an interesting consideration for your perspective would be to talk to a family where one of the children is much more ethnic looking than the other.

Funny, my oldest son is very dark. People often don't think I'm his mother. He looks 100 percent Egyptian. The other looks like Leonardo DiCaprio.

If you asked them who has experienced the most racism, the one who doesn't look Arabic is more angry and frustrated by racist comments because people don't realize that he is Arabic so they say things in front of him that they would never dare say in front of my other son.

That's why I keep trying to get you to consider "microaggression" or "unconscious racism"

Btw, I often use the term "you" as a general statement. Don't always assume I mean you specifically.

But as to the idea of eradicating race, it's a bit weird to try to strip people of their identity and pretend it doesn't matter when it obviously does matter.

Truethat, I'm going to continue with my campaign while noting your opinion on the matter. You of course are free to continue to challenge and question me; I find it constructive. In pressing forward I hope to find a response to the claim that my line of thinking "strips people of their identity", which I certainly would want to avoid if and when my proposal gains any cultural traction.

I'd like you to be aware that I'm not "pretending it doesn't matter"; given that I closely identify with both my Welsh and Native American ancestry, it's hardly my intent to remove cherished feelings of belonging or historicity or pride from any individual's persona, let alone that of an entire nation or people. It would be sheer hubris even to think that I could do that.

Rather, I feel it's important to avoid the automatic affiliation with a larger group, set of behaviors or ideologies that is attached to the concept of race. One can always choose to belong to a group.

 

[angrysoba]

The fact that you posted this, about a video where it is not only blatantly obvious what the comedian was doing, but the comedian himself explains exactly what he is doing in the video is so gut bustingly funny to me it's shocking.

LMFAO

Glad you're amused.

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

Dismissing that is what caused the confusion.

Seriously? That didn't come up in conversation until post #148, yet this has been an ongoing discussion since post #113. Unless time travel was involved, what you say cannot be true.

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

But the entire point is that *everything* he says on stage is coming from a character.

That's often said but, again, I don't think that earns anyone a free pass. Of course I can't provide a breakdown of who in the audience was laughing with the stereotypical Korean voice as a parody (if, indeed, it was - none of us knows Chapelle's thought process) and who was laughing at it.

As I say, I don't think it exculpates the performer to say "it's a character". There used to be a show in the UK called 'Till Death Do Us Part whose main character was called Alf Garnet. It was exported to the US and I forget what the show was called (All In The Family, maybe?), but the main character was renamed Archie Bunker. I'm sure you've heard of the US version , so I don't need to go into too much detail, but Garnet was racist, homophobic, sexist, and all. The intent was for it to be a parody of those attitudes and, indeed, the man who played Alf Garnet was politically left wing and, for that matter, a Jew.

But in interviews he admitted that he kept having people come up to him and say "yeah, you're right about all of that stuff" and he'd tell them that they'd got it backwards and that he was taking the mickey out of people like them. But you even listen to the soundtrack of the programme and, just from where the laughs come, you can tell how most of the audience are taking it.

And I think that, rather than carrying on for decades insisting that the audience was getting it wrong, there should have come a point where he and the writers said "actually, rather than making the points we want to make about bigotry, we're just pandering to bigots and maybe we should stop". It can be a fine line between mocking racists and getting a cheap laugh every time the audience hears the word "wop", and that line isn't necessarily determined by the intentions of the performer.

Now, I don't think that Chapelle is anywhere near that level. But, at the same time, I think that that particular instance does somewhat cross the line from being "Chapelle making a point about race" to "Chapelle getting a cheap laugh by perpetuating a lazy stereotype".

And, for the record, I generally have no issue with edgy humour. I usually like Chapelle, I usually like Sarah Silverman, I enjoy South Park (although, again, the East Asian voices they use is something I dislike about the programme), and so on.

 

[truethat]

Truethat, I'm going to continue with my campaign while noting your opinion on the matter. You of course are free to continue to challenge and question me; I find it constructive. In pressing forward I hope to find a response to the claim that my line of thinking "strips people of their identity", which I certainly would want to avoid if and when my proposal gains any cultural traction.

I'd like you to be aware that I'm not "pretending it doesn't matter"; given that I closely identify with both my Welsh and Native American ancestry, it's hardly my intent to remove cherished feelings of belonging or historicity or pride from any individual's persona, let alone that of an entire nation or people. It would be sheer hubris even to think that I could do that.

Rather, I feel it's important to avoid the automatic affiliation with a larger group, set of behaviors or ideologies that is attached to the concept of race. One can always choose to belong to a group.

Of course, I'm enjoying our dialogue here. It's refreshing to actually come across someone who disagrees with you but is willing to have a mature conversation.

I understand where you are coming from in many ways but I think that there is an unconscious drive to it to basically "make everyone white, so no race" I know for sure that is not what you intend, but what would the "non race" "human" be?

I thought of another way to explain what you're up against. Consider the difference between the concept of the "melting pot" and the "mosaic"

Many people pushed the idea of the "melting pot" in the era of American history where you had the biggest boom of immigrants (BTW I'm aware I tend to discuss these things from an American perspective, I apologize for that narrow view but it's what I know) so in this era the idea of "assimilation" was promoted. This is why you'll see pictures of people from different countries around the world wearing "white man suit and ties" back in old black and white photos from the time.

The eventual conclusion was the the "melting pot" and "assimilation" was ultimately racist because the dominant culture basically took over and forced everyone to be like them.

Mosiac is something that allows each cultural group to maintain identity while being part of a bigger cohesive picture.

So on the one hand it's interesting to say "Get rid of race" but that's like saying that since you look "more white" that you should just ignore your Native American culture.

I am aware that culture and race are two different things, but really for the practical reality of how people interact with one another you will find that they are often closely tied.

Many people get annoyed when people dismiss their ethnic heritage because of what they look like.


I will say this, in reading this thread I've recognized yet another one of my own racist attitudes that I was doing unconsciously. Because I have such diversity in my own family, I used to ask people their ethnic backgrounds if they looked Arabaic or Indian basically hoping that I'd be able to develop a rapport with them based on this.

A few times I got a bit of defensiveness when I asked that question. Now I realize that when I did that, I basically treated the person like an immigrant in their homeland and perpetuated the idea that despite being born and raised as an American I was still casting them as an outsider. I had no idea the way this could come across that way. I certainly didn't mean it that way. But now I shall strike that socializing manner from my repertoire.

 

[truethat]

That's often said but, again, I don't think that earns anyone a free pass. Of course I can't provide a breakdown of who in the audience was laughing with the stereotypical Korean voice as a parody (if, indeed, it was - none of us knows Chapelle's thought process) and who was laughing at it.

As I say, I don't think it exculpates the performer to say "it's a character". There used to be a show in the UK called 'Till Death Do Us Part whose main character was called Alf Garnet. It was exported to the US and I forget what the show was called (All In The Family, maybe?), but the main character was renamed Archie Bunker. I'm sure you've heard of the US version , so I don't need to go into too much detail, but Garnet was racist, homophobic, sexist, and all. The intent was for it to be a parody of those attitudes and, indeed, the man who played Alf Garnet was politically left wing and, for that matter, a Jew.

But in interviews he admitted that he kept having people come up to him and say "yeah, you're right about all of that stuff" and he'd tell them that they'd got it backwards and that he was taking the mickey out of people like them. But you even listen to the soundtrack of the programme and, just from where the laughs come, you can tell how most of the audience are taking it.

And I think that, rather than carrying on for decades insisting that the audience was getting it wrong, there should have come a point where he and the writers said "actually, rather than making the points we want to make about bigotry, we're just pandering to bigots and maybe we should stop". It can be a fine line between mocking racists and getting a cheap laugh every time the audience hears the word "wop", and that line isn't necessarily determined by the intentions of the performer.

Now, I don't think that Chapelle is anywhere near that level. But, at the same time, I think that that particular instance does somewhat cross the line from being "Chapelle making a point about race" to "Chapelle getting a cheap laugh by perpetuating a lazy stereotype".

And, for the record, I generally have no issue with edgy humour. I usually like Chapelle, I usually like Sarah Silverman, I enjoy South Park (although, again, the East Asian voices they use is something I dislike about the programme), and so on.

It's interesting that you point that out. The same thing happened with All in Family. Instead of Archie Bunker being perceived as a racist jerk, he became a beloved hero to many racists.

I guess where I'm confused is why the "Asian voice' seems to bother you more than the "white voice" and the "black voice"

 

[I Ratant]

It's interesting that you point that out. The same thing happened with All in Family. Instead of Archie Bunker being perceived as a racist jerk, he became a beloved hero to many racists.

I guess where I'm confused is why the "Asian voice' seems to bother you more than the "white voice" and the "black voice"

.
And that is the fact.
I won't listen or watch anyone who say "this is what whitey/blacks/jews/arabs"
do either overtly or in "comedy".

 

[blutoski]

"Microaggressions" Cool huh?

Here's a link and some examples:



http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog...y-life/201011/microaggressions-more-just-race

You had a purse-clutching example there that I have personally experienced.

My wife and I were at a conference in NYC and did the usual round of sightseeing. We were in Grand Central Terminal and a family of complete strangers asked me to take their picture. They handed me their digital SLR and posed beside the railing so the interior of the Terminal was in the background. They stood back from me about ten feet so I could fit them all in.

However, the camera was either off or had timed out and powered down, so I was trying to figure out how to switch it back on. I have a Canon, but this was an Olympus and I wasn't familiar with it. My wife has an Olympus, so I turned to her and said "Is this the power here?" at which point, the woman's eyes almost popped out of her head, she rushed over to me, grabbed the camera, and said "Uh, we'll find somebody else."

So what was interesting as I tried to reconstruct her thinking was that firstly, even though I was standing beside my wife the whole time, they probably didn't even consider that we were together. The second is that probably in their mind, a 5'7" white guy is not a thief, but a 5'5" black woman is probably a thief.

Depressing, but my wife and I found it interesting. I asked her if this sort of thing made her mad, and she sait that at that point, she was in her 30s and this sort of thing happens once a week, so she has chosen to just feel sorry for these people instead of getting mad. Otherwise she'd live in a permanent state of rage and that's mentally unhealthy.

But I can see how somebody might go the other route and how these incidents stack on top of each other until they reach a critical mass and shift an attitude.

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

I guess where I'm confused is why the "Asian voice' seems to bother you more than the "white voice" and the "black voice"

Perhaps you should read the posts where I explained this. Either my early posts, or the ones in response to last time you asked the same question.

 

[truethat]

You had a purse-clutching example there that I have personally experienced.

My wife and I were at a conference in NYC and did the usual round of sightseeing. We were in Grand Central Terminal and a family of complete strangers asked me to take their picture. They handed me their digital SLR and posed beside the railing so the interior of the Terminal was in the background. They stood back from me about ten feet so I could fit them all in.

However, the camera was either off or had timed out and powered down, so I was trying to figure out how to switch it back on. I have a Canon, but this was an Olympus and I wasn't familiar with it. My wife has an Olympus, so I turned to her and said "Is this the power here?" at which point, the woman's eyes almost popped out of her head, she rushed over to me, grabbed the camera, and said "Uh, we'll find somebody else."

So what was interesting as I tried to reconstruct her thinking was that firstly, even though I was standing beside my wife the whole time, they probably didn't even consider that we were together. The second is that probably in their mind, a 5'7" white guy is not a thief, but a 5'5" black woman is probably a thief.

Depressing, but my wife and I found it interesting. I asked her if this sort of thing made her mad, and she sait that at that point, she was in her 30s and this sort of thing happens once a week, so she has chosen to just feel sorry for these people instead of getting mad. Otherwise she'd live in a permanent state of rage and that's mentally unhealthy.

But I can see how somebody might go the other route and how these incidents stack on top of each other until they reach a critical mass and shift an attitude.

I would pretty much assure you that no NYer would really have that attitude but I assume they are tourists who are notorious for that.

Here's a few things I do that are some sort of subversive twisting of trying to handle the microaggressions. I'd be curious what your wife would think of them because for a long long time I was completely paranoid that black women would think I was being racist.

So one example I think is funny, on the subways here there's sort of unspoken rule about how you reacclimate to spacial situations. IOW it's completely OK to be jammed up next to people on a crowded subway, but once people would get off and make more room you just automatically scoot down the seat.

Well a few times I'd be standing and a seat would open up. I'm a pretty big chick, 5 11" and I've gained some weight, so I'd not feel like trying to squeeze into the seat. A few times a black woman sitting next to it would give me an eyeball like "what you don't want to sit next to me." So after a while I would immediately jam myself into the seat. But the funny part is after people got off and I was supposed to scoot down I'd make sure I didn't, I didn't want the woman thinking I was just "waiting for an opportunity" to get away from here. One of my black friends said I probably drove them up the wall, "Like what's your problem, MOVE DOWN IDIOT!!"

Oy

Another one I do is whenever I was in a pub and needed to run to the bathroom I'd ask the nearest black person to "watch my stuff" for me. Like I was reassuring them "Hey I trust you....seee!"

My friend also told me that I was probably annoying as crap. LOL Oy again, white guilt.

So I've just learned to let it go. But for a long time I would be out there doing these kinds of things to try to combat the microaggressions.

 

[blutoski]

I would pretty much assure you that no NYer would really have that attitude but I assume they are tourists who are notorious for that.

Here's a few things I do that are some sort of subversive twisting of trying to handle the microaggressions. I'd be curious what your wife would think of them because for a long long time I was completely paranoid that black women would think I was being racist.

So one example I think is funny, on the subways here there's sort of unspoken rule about how you reacclimate to spacial situations. IOW it's completely OK to be jammed up next to people on a crowded subway, but once people would get off and make more room you just automatically scoot down the seat.

Well a few times I'd be standing and a seat would open up. I'm a pretty big chick, 5 11" and I've gained some weight, so I'd not feel like trying to squeeze into the seat. A few times a black woman sitting next to it would give me an eyeball like "what you don't want to sit next to me." So after a while I would immediately jam myself into the seat. But the funny part is after people got off and I was supposed to scoot down I'd make sure I didn't, I didn't want the woman thinking I was just "waiting for an opportunity" to get away from here. One of my black friends said I probably drove them up the wall, "Like what's your problem, MOVE DOWN IDIOT!!"

Oy

Another one I do is whenever I was in a pub and needed to run to the bathroom I'd ask the nearest black person to "watch my stuff" for me. Like I was reassuring them "Hey I trust you....seee!"

My friend also told me that I was probably annoying as crap. LOL Oy again, white guilt.

So I've just learned to let it go. But for a long time I would be out there doing these kinds of things to try to combat the microaggressions.

Yes, these examples are not just about race, but they're part of that 'common sense' contextually dependent set of unspoken, undocumented rules that people absorb through life experience. Some people seem to be better than others with this, for reasons I've listed above in another post.

Milgram did a set of experiments with NY Subway spacing, including asking his healthy able-bodied students to point-blank ask for a seat.

So, I'll give you an example from my experience working with high-functioning autists... I had a student who recognized that in a crowded SkyTrain (Vancouver's version of Subway) nobody was fussed when you're an inch in front of them. So, he figured it would also be fine if the SkyTrain was empty and there were only two people. He just walked right over and sat an inch away so he could see the other person's glasses (he's interested in glasses). He didn't grasp the tacit rule that personal space adjusts with the circumstances.

 

[Pup]

You had a purse-clutching example there that I have personally experienced.

I had a strange experience related to purse-clutching a few years ago. My wife and I (white) were at a budget-style motel in Atlanta, Super 8 or something like that, and had to wait for a room to be ready before we could check in, so she had her laptop at a table in the lobby to kill time. The only other person in the small lobby was a man (black) on his laptop, occasionally talking to the receptionist about computers, and we gathered they knew each other and he was there to work on the motel's computers, although he had no company nametag or anything to identify him.

My wife had trouble going online, and the man overheard and said she should use Firefox. She said she didn't have that browser installed. He insisted she should install it. She said no thanks, it wasn't that important to go online and it didn't seem to be a browser issue anyway--her computer just wasn't showing enough bars.

He got up, walked over, and tried to physically insert a flash drive or something similar into her computer, supposedly to download Firefox. I blocked it with my hand and said no thanks.

His race had absolutely nothing with the basic safety rule that we don't let strangers randomly download things onto our computers, though admittedly when strangers try, it's usually spammers sending links in emails, not people attempting it in person.

But he was clearly upset and suddenly began talking to no one in particular about Obama being elected and racial politics, as if he interpreted it as a purse-clutching incident. The receptionist was getting uncomfortable, though I couldn't tell whose side she took--but suddenly a room opened up and we could check in.

I have no idea how one avoids looking like a purse-clutcher in circumstances like that.

 

[blutoski]

I have no idea how one avoids looking like a purse-clutcher in circumstances like that.

Yeah, there's hypersensitivity out there for sure.

As a counterexample, my wife notices when we're seated next to the bathrooms or kitchen despite available better seating. When we started dating, she would voice suspicion about the hostess' "motives".

My experience in restaurants is that just because there's unoccupied seats, it doesn't mean the hostess should use them. Sometimes they're in a closed section, sometimes they're in an oversubscribed section (the hostess is trying to even out the waitstaff's workload), sometimes they're waiting for a reservation that starts in a few minutes. There are so many factors that it's unreasonable to go straight to assuming we're being parked out of sight.

On the other hand, I have detected some genuine seating decisions intended to hide her. We were in a restaurant in Richmond BC and not only were the three black parties parked in a pocket in the back (statistically improbable) but there was a Chinese couple beside us, reseated, and a black couple was shown to their table. Pretty obvious.

And that last example reveals that at this point in the Lower Mainland, overt prejudice seems pretty equal-opportunity. Chinese and Japanese immigrants seem to be terrified by blacks, many blacks and Indians here are Moslem and hate Hindus/Sikhs/Jews, and the racist whites all seem to be of three types: old people, East European immigrants, and rural skinheads.

 

[truethat]

Perhaps you should read the posts where I explained this. Either my early posts, or the ones in response to last time you asked the same question.

Maybe you don't realize it, perhaps Mumbles can back me up here, but you have repeatedly drawn attention to the Asian voice and not the others.

I'm not sure why you don't see that in your own posts. It's exactly what you said in your first post on the matter.

I think there's a difference between the two. When he's calling the Vietnamese guy by a racial epithet he's role-playing what someone is thinking, making the point that everybody is prejudiced in some way. He's overplaying it in every situation but, then he's a comedian.

However, when he's putting on an "ah so!" voice to role-play the Vietnamese guy, that's not Dave Chappelle saying "people are like this" and making a point about racism, it's Dave Chapelle actually doing that and actually being racist.

You are continuously saying that it's "different" because its Asian, and then when I respond to that you pretend you aren't saying that. That's why I am confused.

What did you mean when you said THIS?

Without wanting to get all A+ on the thread, I don't think you can say that the examples are equivalent, unless you're contending that "the white accent" has historically been used to keep the oppressed minority of white people in America down.

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

Again, you seem to be talking about things I haven't said, and all I can do is suggest you go back and re-read the posts in which your questions have already been answered.

 

[sir drinks-a-lot]

Yeah, there's hypersensitivity out there for sure.

Tons of it out here on the Left Coast. And there's a pretty funny Curb Your Enthusiasm episode with a bit of it.

There's also this sort of bizarre kind of politically correct racism out here, or whatever you want to call it where people are awkwardly extra nice to black people to sort of prove they're not racist. I guess it's sort of another form of hypersensitivity.