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toastykittenHell, I am actually considering subscribing to The Atlantic because of him. Look at the stuff he says:
If you told me that 100 percent of the Boule, the Links and Jack and Jill look down on lower-class black folks, indeed, believe that they deserve to be where they are, I'd argue. But I'm a man who still laughs at "Niggers vs. Black people. And Jack And Jill can spot my ghetto-ass a mile away. I'd argue, but not because I took offense.
When you're not on the business end of an -ism, it's always easy to underestimate the malice of its employers. When you're a part of that class of employers, it becomes even easier.
You know what this is. I've written repeatedly about how racism can be a problem in a society with seemingly no racists, how racism--out of all the isms--became the province of cannibals, ogres, people existing one rung above the rapist, and child molester. Some of this is our fault--dramatizing the depravity of Southern racists was a brilliant political strategy. But the unexpected upshot is that whites who know they'd never sic a dog on a kid for the crime of crossing a street, can sit at home and say "Well if that's racism, I know I'm not that." It'd be as if our thoughts of sexism revolved strictly around honor-killings and rape. Perhaps they do.
Black people who go out into the wider world don't have the luxury of thinking about racists strictly as societal outcasts, any more than women have the luxury of thinking about sexists strictly as rapists. The society is changing, no question. The world is a less racist place. But this is coming from a start of being an intensely, intrinsically racist place.
(Bolding mine.)
If you told me that 100 percent of the Boule, the Links and Jack and Jill look down on lower-class black folks, indeed, believe that they deserve to be where they are, I'd argue. But I'm a man who still laughs at "Niggers vs. Black people. And Jack And Jill can spot my ghetto-ass a mile away. I'd argue, but not because I took offense.
When you're not on the business end of an -ism, it's always easy to underestimate the malice of its employers. When you're a part of that class of employers, it becomes even easier.
You know what this is. I've written repeatedly about how racism can be a problem in a society with seemingly no racists, how racism--out of all the isms--became the province of cannibals, ogres, people existing one rung above the rapist, and child molester. Some of this is our fault--dramatizing the depravity of Southern racists was a brilliant political strategy. But the unexpected upshot is that whites who know they'd never sic a dog on a kid for the crime of crossing a street, can sit at home and say "Well if that's racism, I know I'm not that." It'd be as if our thoughts of sexism revolved strictly around honor-killings and rape. Perhaps they do.
Black people who go out into the wider world don't have the luxury of thinking about racists strictly as societal outcasts, any more than women have the luxury of thinking about sexists strictly as rapists. The society is changing, no question. The world is a less racist place. But this is coming from a start of being an intensely, intrinsically racist place.
(Bolding mine.)
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