My Racist Friend

I went to work on the previous post before I read about this:



An eleven-year-old boy sings the national anthem at a professional basketball game, and sings it quite well.  (A bit shaky on the high notes, but many adults do worse.)  Watching the video creeped me out in numerous ways: the use of children to sell jingoism, and the militarization of American sport (though who cares, I know), the pomposity of the announcer trying to elevate sport to cosmic levels of significance.

I wouldn't have seen the video if not for the reaction of many Americans to the boy: Twitter apparently exploded with expressions of rage that a "Mexican" was allowed to breathe on our sacred bloodthirsty-doggerel-set-to-the-tune-of-a-drinking-song.  (More of their frenzy is collected here.)  It's reminiscent, among other shining hours, of the widespread reactions to the discovery that some important characters in The Hunger Games were, like, black.  It's also a reminder that adult nativist bigots don't discriminate between adults and children in their attacks.

It quickly emerged that Sebastien De La Cruz is a native-born American citizen, and his father served in the US Navy.  You don't have to listen very closely to recognize that he sings the words with an American accent.  He responded to his critics on TV with poise and remarkable articulateness for a boy his age.  (You can see his original performance and his rebuttal on the same page that showed some of the racist tweets.)  One commenter on Youtube wailed, "It's horrible that a TEN year old child has to come on television to defend himself against racist tweets."  I think it's great that a ten (or eleven, or twelve -- the numbers vary, as does the spelling of his first name) year old child got to go on television and demonstrate his intelligence and fundamental decency compared to the cowardly scum who attacked him from the anonymous safety of the Internet.  I'm also impressed that he didn't use the typical liberal response to bigotry, Oh, how can you say such awful things? I have to go kill myself now, I'm too pure to live in this world.  I hope Sebastien De La Cruz goes far.

Of course, it wouldn't matter in the least if the boy were "just a Mexican," as he put it, or even if he were an "illegal immigrant."  (Remember, racists don't really distinguish between legal and illegal immigrants: they regard all immigrants as illegal.)   Nor would it matter if he were a Mexican visitor invited to sing at the NBA finals in the heavily Mexican-American town of San Antonio because of his talent and fame as a child mariachi singer.  Many foreigners foolishly believe that American ideals of freedom, equality, and welcome to the world's huddled masses are actually meant to be honored and practiced here, rather than pissed on by our Morlock masses.

I'm in a somewhat better mood now than I was when I began writing this post this afternoon.  I passed these links along on Facebook, signing off my post with "Remember, Christian racists, I'll see you in Hell."  This was partly out of general exasperation with the racist garbage in which my country marinates, much of which some of my Facebook friends happily share on their timelines, but I confess that it was partly because I learned earlier today (on Facebook, natch) that one of my racist former friends died yesterday.  (Former, because she defriended me a couple of years ago after I called her on her anti-immigrant racism. I believe there was some antigay bigotry in the mix too.)  She was a year younger than I am, and we went to the same school from second grade on.  I remember her as a nice kid, but all I know of her as an adult was her racist diatribes against illegals and against any charity for the survivors of the 2010 Haitian earthquake; like many bigots, she opposed universal health care in America because she thought it might help illegal immigrants.  And of course she also loved to post inspirational Christian memes, with no sign of cognitive dissonance.  I didn't mention any of this in the comments on her passing on Facebook, of course; it wasn't the time or place for it.  This blog is.

We all die, and it's disturbing when someone younger than I am bites the dust.  I didn't realize at first the connection between my anger at the bigots who denigrated Sebastien De La Cruz and my anger at my former friend. And at mortality, I guess.  My anger wasn't inappropriate in the least, but I was seething more than I usually would.  It was interesting to realize how furious I was, and to try to sort out why.  She's not the only Christian racist I'll see in Hell, if there is a Hell, but my subconscious evidently made the connection.

Maybe I should add for clarity that I don't believe in Hell -- I'm an atheist, duh -- and even if I had the power, I would not condemn anyone to eternal punishment.  Punishment doesn't fix anything.  (But remember, in saying "I'll see you in Hell" I'm starting from the notion of the Christian Hell, and if it exists, I as an atheist and a homosexual will surely go there.  The only problem is that the Christian racists might not, but if it works out that way, I certainly wouldn't want to spend eternity with them anyhow.)   If I were constructing an afterlife, it would be an environment where no one could hurt anyone else, which would be punishment for those who want to hurt others.  Imagine all the racists in a post-mortem state, with lots of the racial others they hate all around them, and unable to do anything to exclude them, marginalize them, or make them suffer for their difference.  (That could be a kind of Purgatory, I suppose.)  I don't think such a condition is possible, but it is the only kind of afterlife I could endorse.  The closest to such a concept I've seen is Kore-eda Hirokazu's film After Life, which rejects both Heaven and Hell in favor of something I could live with -- for myself and others.

Peace, Perfection, and Purity

I got e-mail the other day from someone I'd quoted in a previous post, Scott from Chicago, who'd urged  Ta-Nehisi Coates (and presumably other African-Americans) to play nice:

I am starting to have misgivings about articles like these: All that is good in the world (that I have observed) comes from tolerance and a willingness to forgive. Nothing ever good stems from quests for perfection and purity.

I wrote that I have misgivings about people who make such recommendations, and Scott asked me what those misgivings were.  I didn't go into that at length in the earlier post, partly out of laziness and partly because I thought most of my readers wouldn't need to be told.   But since he asked, it seems like a good idea to explain. What follows is a slightly longer version of my reply to him.

I stated my misgiving in the blog post, right after I quoted him: it seems that it is always the people being picked on who are expected to play nice.  It never seems to discredit majorities, and especially powerful majorities, when they behave badly; no one scolds them about demanding "perfection and purity" from the people they attack, no one says that they need to exhibit more "tolerance and a willingness to forgive."  A similar pattern can be seen when righteous liberals demand that dissidents be non-violent, though they make no demand that the State renounce violence.

I'm not sure what "tolerance and a willingness to forgive" have to do with it.  I think most African-Americans, for example, would be perfectly happy to "tolerate" white people if white people would just stop being racist.  (I know that's how I feel about heterosexuals, as a gay man: I get along fine with many or most heterosexuals.  The bigots just need to stop being bigots.)  I think it is very significant that the request to refrain from racist behavior is considered a counsel of "perfection and purity."

As for being willing to forgive, I think it's reasonable to expect people to recognize and admit they've done something wrong before one forgives them.  Since so many white people indignantly deny that they've done or said something racist, no matter what they do, I think forgiveness would be premature.  Not all white people do this, of course, but I'm not talking about them: I'm talking about those who think you're only a racist if you've ever owned a slave or lynched somebody.

The requirement of "tolerance" also interests me because it implies that white people, for example, are somehow disadvantaged, even oppressed, by black people's alleged intolerance of them.  But what TNC is calling for (if I understand him correctly) is not intolerance of white people, it's intolerance of racism, and I don't see any reason why racism should be tolerated.  It can be forgiven if someone actually asks for forgiveness.  But I see very little (if any) of that.  Polls continuously show that most white Americans believe that racism is no longer a problem in the US, and that's absurd.

There's a similar line about "guilt."  Criticize someone for racism or sexism, he may protest that you're just trying to make him feel guilty.  Not at all.  I just want him to stop being racist or sexist.  I'm probably obtuse, but I've always been baffled when I hear white men talking about how they were made to feel guilty for being white or male.  Maybe they were, but I've never gotten that feeling either from anti-racists or women, and I've always been a major guilt junkie.  What they wanted was for me to change my behavior.  And my attitudes, if at all possible.  I found it quite possible.

P.S. A flood of rants about the new "Mexican" Pope on Yes, You're Racist's Twitter feed.  But then someone tweeted "These people ... are frightening. Following @YesYoureRacist makes us non US think all white Americans are vile racists."  The blame for stereotyping should fall on the person who stereotypes, however.  As Yes, You're Racist replied, "But I'm a white American ..."