Your Racist is Showing

“DISPARAGING COMMENTS”

“I realize you are from a generation in which it was considered acceptable to call blacks ‘those people,’ and to make disparaging comments about them, but this is 2014.” Glad I Don’t Work There

Is it a disparaging comment, as “Glad” has clearly made, to call blacks “blacks”? Does calling blacks “blacks” suggest that Glad is racist? What is a racist? What is racism? Is the current ideal of colour-blindness where race is concerned possible? Can Glad ignore the evidence of her eyes that blacks exist? These questions raise interesting opportunities to clarify the embedded concepts.

Glad has considered it acceptable to call blacks “blacks” and, depending upon the connotation which Glad places on the term “black” it may, or may not, be racist. If Glad harbours negative thoughts about the characteristics of blacks yet nonetheless proceeds to call them “blacks,” then clearly Glad is a racist. On the other hand, Glad may harbour no such negative thoughts about blacks so calling them “blacks” carries no stigma of racism. She is just reporting on the evidence of her eyes, the evidence of perception.

The question, of course, is whether Glad must overtly utter the word “blacks” as a disparaging comment at all in order to count as being a racist. Indeed Glad, while saying nothing, may secretly harbour negative thoughts about the characteristics of blacks. Is Glad still thereby a racist even if no one heard her utter a disparaging comment about blacks? Must racism, to be racism, be overt?

And what about the ideal of colour-blindness in respect to race? While walking along the street Glad sees a group of blacks. If Glad aspires to the ideal, must Glad ignore the evidence of her eyes? Must she be colour-blind or can she acknowledge the evidence of her perception yet make no further assumptions? But the question is, “Is this possible?” This raises the philosophical issue of the nature of conceptualization.

A concept is a concept by virtue of the fact that it renders reality meaningful. In other words, something is or is not meaningful if it falls under a concept and to fall under a concept is, by definition, to be made meaningful, to be made intelligible. So Glad perceives the group of blacks as being an identifiable group, one having similar characteristics. But – and this is important – can Glad simply perceive that group of blacks without some further judgement, without some sort of assessment, without a framework of interpretation that serves to raise that group of blacks, in Glad’s mind, out of the category of mere objects of perception and to situate them in the category of conception, of being made meaningful and can she do this independently of her own socially-constructed conceptual framework? In still other words, is the current ideal of colour-blindness conceptually possible?

But these must be questions for another time. Thank you for your patience and understanding.

A pleasure as always.

Cheerio!