| |
|
Aside from the "racially," S.E., I would have to suspect that the majority of marriages throughout history* and across the world have been between a man and his presumed inferior(s).
Well, yeah, but there's a whole level to excavate here before we get into history. What Sole Eater has answered with:
Do I understand that I'm to be labelled racist then? Surely that's a bit extreme. Brash, loud, insensitive, ignorant, Yes! Arrogant even. But I cite my (second) marriage to a half Sri Lankan, half Indian woman (now ended, amicably) and our 14 year old daughter of mingled blood (mine includes Danish, German, Arab, Jewish, Irish and Scottish) as placing me fairly and squarely outside the racist box. It'd be hard to love someone you feel is racially inferior to you, I'd imagine.
A statement that doesn't exist. There is an excluded middle where nobody has actually said "and this evinces racism, which is defined here as the feeling that people of another other race are racially inferior to you". I don't think that's exactly right. Does the description of the Chinese shipworkers as naive or childlike come from a clear and immanent belief in their racial inferiority? No. It may, however, still very comfortably be identified as a sign of a questionable perception of people which may well be tied in to perceptions of their race.
Recently, a friend of mine was part of a discussion about an action seen by many as racist taken by one of her colleagues. At the end of this, during which discussion the colleague maintained strenuously that he was not in any way a racist, he had not a racist bone in his body, any suggestion that race played any part n his actions was utterly mistaken, she wanted to ask him "so, how did you do it? I'm x years old, and in those x years I'm sure I have developed some attitudes around race that aren't entirely healthy, and that I'm not even aware of. How did you manage to stop any of that stuff happening to you? How have you race-proofed your brain".
However, nobody wants to say "well, I may have some ingrained attitudes to race, but I try to work hard on confronting them, and yes, it's possible that this particular line of thought has been affected by some unexamined attitudes I have about Indians, Chinese people or indeed my co-workers", because that does put one in a position of considerable weakness. So, yeah. Maybe it has to be taken that "I am not a racist" comes to mean something like "What I am saying now does not to my knowledge come from a racist place. but I'm not going to lose it if that possibility is suggested". It's the issue of thoughts, words, actions and motivations. |
|
|
