How to argue about whether something is racist

This class is about how to argue whether a text or action of some kind is racist; this isn’t about whether a person is racist. On the whole, that isn’t a productive argument (although you sometimes have to have it). The first step in a useful argument about whether something is racist is to try to figure out why we’re having the argument in the first place—what the determination of racist/not racist will do for us is what enables us to decide which definition of racism is the most relevant.

All of this may seem confusing to you, since you might be accustomed to thinking of “is this racist” as a straightforward question of right and wrong—if it’s racist, it’s morally wrong, and if it isn’t, then it’s morally right. And while I do think racism is morally wrong, I also think there is a continuum with some things being more racist than others (as you’ll find later, it’s even possible for something to be racist and anti-racist at the same time). Even if something is morally wrong, you’re likely to respond to it in different ways. For instance, your 90 year old not-quite-all-there grandpa might use a term we now consider racist but which was considered the polite term when he was young. You’d react to that differently than if someone your own age (who knows perfectly well it isn’t an okay term) uses it. You might not do anything at all with your grandpa, but drop like a hot rock the person your age.

If a person making hiring decisions for your company said something racist, you’d react differently than you would if some random person in line at the grocery store said the same thing. If you were HR, you might fire them—whether or not they intended to be racist, on the grounds that their mere presence on the hiring team jeopardized your company.

In this class, we’ll spend a lot of time talking about different definitions of “racist,” which ones are more useful than others, and under what circumstances.

On the whole, definitions of racism tend to emphasize one of several points on the rhetorical triangle: text, intent, consequence, relationship to context,or impact on audience.

For instance, for some people, as long as a text does not have racist epithets it isn’t racist (although those same people don’t usually immediately decide that a text with racist epithets is racist—more on that below). Others do decide that the use of racist epithet (by any character or in any context) is racist. Both those decisions rely purely on text.

This criterion—presence or absence of racist epithets—seems to me the least useful, in that there are the fewest instances in which it seems to me especially relevant. A person can, after all, argue for the expulsion or even extermination of another race without using racist epithets (in fact, that’s most commonly how it’s done). And some anti-racist texts can use racist epithets to persuade the audience that racism is harmful (the argument often made about Django Unchained).

Many people believe that the main problem with racism is that it is hostility against members of another “race”—that is, it is an issue of individuals’ feelings. If you define “racism” as “hostility toward members of another race,” then you will tend to look at texts for evidence of hostility—affective markers, boosters, and other linguistic signs of anger. That method also doesn’t work particularly well, as some of the most racist policies have been invoked in the name of kindness, with apparently calm tones, or by appealing to “facts” and “reality.” (White supremacists often call themselves “racial realists.”)

Emphasizing the feelings that individuals have is one example of how people imagine racism to be a problem of individual agency (rather than systems). In this model, racism exists because too many people choose to be racist, or allow themselves to slip into racist and ingrained habits. If enough individuals chose to stop responding in racist ways, then racism goes away. (That is a problematic assumption.)

Intent seems to me a slightly more usable criterion, but only for limited circumstances. It is important in social situations in which we’re trying to determine if a person should be forgiven. If a person says something racist, but didn’t mean to (didn’t realize it was a racist term, was thoughtlessly repeating a meme they didn’t understand to be racist), then you’re more likely to be willing to forgive them. If they keep saying that thing, although it’s been explained to them that they’re saying something racist, then we might conclude that they really do intend to be racist.

Intent matters in some legal situations (e.g., hate crimes) but not others (e.g., the question of disparate impact). “Disparate impact” is a kind of racism that doesn’t require any intent—if you have a policy with no intent of hurting a particular race (or religion), but that’s exactly what it will do, then you’ve got “disparate impact,” which has been ruled discrimination. If you ban hairstyles that you consider too casual, and they’re precisely and exclusively the ones worn by people of a particular race, then—whether or not it was your conscious intent—your policy has racist consequences. (A lot of school dress codes get challenged on exactly these grounds.)

Intent, like the question of feelings, assumes that racism is the consequence of individuals choosing or allowing themselves to be racist—that there is individual agency in racism. The assumption is that if we had a world in which no one intended to be racist, there would be no racism, but that isn’t the case.

Thus, intent matters for law and social castigation, but it’s of limited importance in other ways. For instance, google image search “beautiful hair.” You’ll see a very racist outcome—almost exclusively white women (and the nonwhite women usually have very, very high maintenance hair). But there was no one intending to create a racist cultural view of what is beautiful hair. There are people intending to sell products, and doing so within a racist culture.

One of the more straightforward ways to measure whether a text or action is racist is to look at whether it reinforces existing racist practices and structures. The most productive arguments, it seems to me, work within this framework. I think it’s helpful partially because it allows a more nuanced discussion—it’s possible to talk about how much harm something caused, what kind, and to whom. It’s also possible to talk more intelligently about texts that are both racist and anti-racist (South Pacific, To Kill a Mockingbird) if we think about harm; we can talk about the kind of harm the text or action tried to prevent or ameliorate and what kind of harm it caused.

Thinking about consequence also enables us to talk about the same act or text having different consequences in different era or with different audiences. Some critics of American Sniper argued that it was seen as racist in its showings in Iraq because viewers saw it as demonizing a particular political party, but it had racist consequences in the US because viewers saw it as confirming demonized (and racist) views of Iraqis. It could be argued that To Kill a Mockingbird was progressive for its era, but now it’s actually regressive.

That last comment brings up the argument about relationship to context—what do we do about texts that are racist, but less racist than was the norm for their era or culture? If we think of “racist” as an absolute category—something is either racist or it isn’t—then we’re hopelessly entangled by these cases. If we can think of it as on a continuum, then we can talk about them more sensibly.

We have to be careful, however, not to assume that things have been getting steadily less racist as time goes on. Huckleberry Finn (1885) is much more racist than Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), and there was a lot of anti-racist being done in its era. Sometimes we excuse texts by overstating the dominance of racism in an era—even in eras in which it was common, there were people who spoke against it. While I don’t think that racism is subject to pure agency (people could simply choose to be or not to be racist), there are some choices. So, while I think it’s useful to put texts in contexts, it should be in service of a nuanced understanding of how the racism works in them, not as a “get out of racism” free card.

The criterion of impact on audience might be subsumed under consequence, but students have found it useful to separate them. The impact on the audience might cultural (the text problematizes or confirms common racist attitudes) but it might also be more individual (the text makes individuals uncomfortable in a good or bad way). For instance, while the word “niggardly” has nothing to do with the similar sounding racist term, it’s reasonable for some people to be made really uncomfortable by it, and so it’s reasonable to try to avoid using it.

My point in giving all these criteria is not to set out some kind of easy decision-tree on “is this racist.” Instead, I’m suggesting that students see these criteria as stases for arguments about racism. It’s hard to have a good argument on anything if interlocutors are on different stases, and a lot of people don’t realize that any argument can have multiple stases—and you can choose among them. Sometimes, for an argument about racism to become more useful, people have to agree first on the stasis, and that might mean that people might have to understand that their notion about how to determine “is this racist” isn’t a useful criterion. In this class, you’ll be looking at that question a lot–what is the stasis for this argument, and is it the most relevant and useful stasis?