Taboo Words: Rapist Versus Racist
When the caustic female comedian at the White House Correspondents' dinner last night dropped the F-bomb, I barely noticed, and I certainly wasn't bothered by her use of the word "pussy." Only when I listened to commentary by MSNBC talking heads after the event did I remember that cursing is not allowed on basic cable. When the President can say "sons of bitches" at a rally and when millions vote for him after he's heard bragging about grabbing pussies, it's hard to be shocked by anything a comedian says. Earlier on Saturday, my sometimes favorite cable anchor Joy Reid had to apologize for words she may or may not have used in blogs written ten years earlier. In the discussion that followed her apology, the talking heads pointed out how much damage can be done by words. I have written several blogs about words that matter. Recently (2/12/17, 1/21/18), I've focused on subliminally racist language. But I've also been increasingly disturbed by how two very similar words (only one letter is different) have been treated. It's stunning to me that people feel more comfortable calling men like Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein, and Donald Trump rapists than they do calling Trump and his deplorable followers racists. In fact, yesterday afternoon (between Joy's show in the morning and the Correspondents' dinner in the evening) when I said while commenting on a Joy Reid fan club post that calling a black man who sexually assaulted a white woman a rapist is racist, an apparently younger black woman chastised me for mentioning race because that's why whites become upset with us and accuse us of playing the race card. As the former FBI director might say, "Lordy!"
Both rapists and racists are deplorable. But only rape is a heinous crime that can lead to years of jail time (depending on the race(s) of the victim and perpetrator). If racists don't act on their racism by attacking nonwhite people or vandalizing their property, they are free to spread their racist lies about lazy black and brown rapists and drug dealers. And as I suggested in an earlier post (10/29/17), unlike sexual assault and harassment, rape is easy to define. If one person says no, and the other person (or people in gang rape) forces himself (because most rapists are men) on her, it's rape. If one person having sex is underage and the other one is not, even if the younger person (male or female) gives consent, it's statutory rape. Racism, like sexism, is harder to define. To rewrite an old Ralph Ellison joke (INVISIBLE MAN), some nonwhite people are so racially sensitive that they might condemn a white person as racist for not liking the dark meat of a turkey. But we should all be able to agree that when a white man accuses a black man born in Hawaii to a white mother and black African-born father of being secretly Kenyan, he's a racist. We don't have to worry about what he did in the seventies or what he's saying about "shithole" countries or the black NFL players now. Yet media critic Howard Kurtz, in his book MEDIA MADNESS, criticized journalist Ben Smith, the editor of BUZZFEED, for calling Trump a racist. I gave Kurtz's book a one-star rating in my Goodreads review for the following sentence: "That might have been the most troubling declaration: that Trump's racism was simply an undisputed fact, not a journalist's assessment, and that there was no room for dissent on this score." I have news for Mr. Kurtz; Trump's racism is an undisputed fact; it's as undisputed as his gender, race, age, and birth place.
I'm not sure why "racist" is a taboo word, and "rapist" isn't. The MSNBC commentators' response to the F-bomb and the comedian's use of the word "pussy" at least twice last night suggests that references to sexual acts should be more taboo, but Americans, especially those in the media, have always preferred discussing sex to race (See my 11/24/13 and 11/26/17 blogs). In fact, I'm convinced that the METOO movement was started by the media not only to help create an atmosphere where they could lock up freaky Bill Cosby for having weird sex with all of those white women but also to take attention away from Trump's constant racist outbursts--shithole countries, building that southern wall, attacks on nonwhite immigrants/refugees and black athletes. And, of course, if we don't mention race, then we might not notice that the prosecutor who campaigned on locking up Cosby for rape is white, that the foreign woman who took three million dollars of his money and then pursued him in a criminal case is white as are all but two of his alleged victims, that the witness who claimed that the foreign white woman had talked about framing a celebrity for money is black, and that all but two of the jurors who apparently believed the white woman and not the black one were white. We can pretend that calling a black man who had sex with a white woman a rapist has nothing to do with lynching, Emmett Till, and the objections to integrated schools in the fifties. We can pretend that what James Baldwin said explicitly and other black writers such as Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, and Toni Morrison have implied--racism is all about sex--is not true.
The problem with taboos is that we tend to be drawn to them; like priests denied sex, we become more obsessed and eventually perverted in our need to sample the forbidden. Ellison made that point about white women and black men with his character Sybil. We tend to desire what we can't have, which is why white women like Sybil secretly want black men to rape them and may scream rape when it's the last thing on a black man's mind. And black men might want to have sex with white women because until the seventies sexual contact between a black man and a white woman (but not between a black woman and a white man) was taboo. Our failure to openly discuss racism not only allows it to hide in plain sight, to grow, fester, and move into the White House but also probably makes all of us secretly think and worry about racism more than we would if we could openly discuss it. We become secretly obsessed and perverted in our thoughts.
I have become the racism whisperer (actually shouter). If I see racism, I will call it out, and as I said in my review of Kurtz's book, I like to point out that the racism deniers are more dangerous than Trump and his deplorable followers. Bill Cosby may or may not have committed criminal sexual assault, but he is definitely not a rapist. Those who call him a rapist are either racists or brainwashed nonwhites and clueless whites who need to read some black history to know what time it is. Calling a black man accused of having nonconsensual sexual contact with a white woman a rapist is racist. That should be (in fact, is) an undisputed fact.
Both rapists and racists are deplorable. But only rape is a heinous crime that can lead to years of jail time (depending on the race(s) of the victim and perpetrator). If racists don't act on their racism by attacking nonwhite people or vandalizing their property, they are free to spread their racist lies about lazy black and brown rapists and drug dealers. And as I suggested in an earlier post (10/29/17), unlike sexual assault and harassment, rape is easy to define. If one person says no, and the other person (or people in gang rape) forces himself (because most rapists are men) on her, it's rape. If one person having sex is underage and the other one is not, even if the younger person (male or female) gives consent, it's statutory rape. Racism, like sexism, is harder to define. To rewrite an old Ralph Ellison joke (INVISIBLE MAN), some nonwhite people are so racially sensitive that they might condemn a white person as racist for not liking the dark meat of a turkey. But we should all be able to agree that when a white man accuses a black man born in Hawaii to a white mother and black African-born father of being secretly Kenyan, he's a racist. We don't have to worry about what he did in the seventies or what he's saying about "shithole" countries or the black NFL players now. Yet media critic Howard Kurtz, in his book MEDIA MADNESS, criticized journalist Ben Smith, the editor of BUZZFEED, for calling Trump a racist. I gave Kurtz's book a one-star rating in my Goodreads review for the following sentence: "That might have been the most troubling declaration: that Trump's racism was simply an undisputed fact, not a journalist's assessment, and that there was no room for dissent on this score." I have news for Mr. Kurtz; Trump's racism is an undisputed fact; it's as undisputed as his gender, race, age, and birth place.
I'm not sure why "racist" is a taboo word, and "rapist" isn't. The MSNBC commentators' response to the F-bomb and the comedian's use of the word "pussy" at least twice last night suggests that references to sexual acts should be more taboo, but Americans, especially those in the media, have always preferred discussing sex to race (See my 11/24/13 and 11/26/17 blogs). In fact, I'm convinced that the METOO movement was started by the media not only to help create an atmosphere where they could lock up freaky Bill Cosby for having weird sex with all of those white women but also to take attention away from Trump's constant racist outbursts--shithole countries, building that southern wall, attacks on nonwhite immigrants/refugees and black athletes. And, of course, if we don't mention race, then we might not notice that the prosecutor who campaigned on locking up Cosby for rape is white, that the foreign woman who took three million dollars of his money and then pursued him in a criminal case is white as are all but two of his alleged victims, that the witness who claimed that the foreign white woman had talked about framing a celebrity for money is black, and that all but two of the jurors who apparently believed the white woman and not the black one were white. We can pretend that calling a black man who had sex with a white woman a rapist has nothing to do with lynching, Emmett Till, and the objections to integrated schools in the fifties. We can pretend that what James Baldwin said explicitly and other black writers such as Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, and Toni Morrison have implied--racism is all about sex--is not true.
The problem with taboos is that we tend to be drawn to them; like priests denied sex, we become more obsessed and eventually perverted in our need to sample the forbidden. Ellison made that point about white women and black men with his character Sybil. We tend to desire what we can't have, which is why white women like Sybil secretly want black men to rape them and may scream rape when it's the last thing on a black man's mind. And black men might want to have sex with white women because until the seventies sexual contact between a black man and a white woman (but not between a black woman and a white man) was taboo. Our failure to openly discuss racism not only allows it to hide in plain sight, to grow, fester, and move into the White House but also probably makes all of us secretly think and worry about racism more than we would if we could openly discuss it. We become secretly obsessed and perverted in our thoughts.
I have become the racism whisperer (actually shouter). If I see racism, I will call it out, and as I said in my review of Kurtz's book, I like to point out that the racism deniers are more dangerous than Trump and his deplorable followers. Bill Cosby may or may not have committed criminal sexual assault, but he is definitely not a rapist. Those who call him a rapist are either racists or brainwashed nonwhites and clueless whites who need to read some black history to know what time it is. Calling a black man accused of having nonconsensual sexual contact with a white woman a rapist is racist. That should be (in fact, is) an undisputed fact.
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